Phobos Affair
by JMK758
Summary: Inspired by Pauley Perrette's 'Fear', the Team battles one of mankind's most basic emotions to counter a deadly threat.
1. Connecting Fight

This is my 37th NCIS Mystery, the Seventh story of my Fourth Season.  
I occasionally delve into interviews with the Casts of the various NCIS incarnations for Easter Eggs I can use for my stories. I had been working for weeks on a story that would not come together when I came across a very chilling video by **Pauley Perrette** , and within minutes I had the concept and outline for this story. There are two versions out there, the one referenced in this story is the acoustic version that appeared on the Official NCIS album. **Thank you, Pauley**.  
NCIS is owned by Belisarius Productions. The usual legal Disclaimers about making money and taking Characters that belong to others apply. I only own Rev. Siobhan (O'Mallory) McGee, Apprentice Pathologist Dr. Samantha Sky and original Agents. You can find all my stories listed in order in my Profile.  
My many Affairs are a homage to David McCallum.  
This story begins on Saturday, August 4.  
Rated T or NCis-17  
Please Review.

The Phobos Affair  
by JMK758  
Chapter One  
Connecting Fight

Catherine Bachman opens the front door and her husband George and teenaged Ben and Chloe carry the grocery bags into the house. It hadn't been easy at all to get the fourteen and thirteen year olds to do their share of the shopping, particularly not on a Saturday morning. Chloe had been vocal in her complaints, but that hour of teenage carping had been nothing like the piercing shriek the girl emits as soon as she crosses the threshold.

Six men, clad in Army fatigues but with black masks across their faces, line the living room, a row of AK47s converged upon the Bachmans.

"What the hell is–?" is as far as George gets when one assault rifle joins the other two pointing at him, three weapons converging on his heart while the other rifles keep their aim upon Catherine, Ben and Chloe.

Catherine has been scared many thousands of times, but never has she felt such horrific fear as that which kicks her heart to mad racing, tears at her breath until she's sure she's going to pass out.

The man on the far left brings his weapon up on the strap along his left arm and secures it to his back, then picks up a bag from the floor, comes to and around the four and shuts the door.

"Please," Catherine starts but the out thrust weapon pushed toward her face silences her. Her pounding heart nearly seizes. She's sure her last second is in the huge barrel inches from her eyes but the missile isn't launched.

The man behind her brings forward a perforated red ball upon leather bands such as is used in Bondage playacting and forces her mouth open, pulls the ball in. It catches her hair in the cinch as he secures the strap behind her head. He pulls the strap hard through the fastener so that when he's done the leather pulls the sides of her mouth back and she barely has room to place her tongue.

He clutches her arms, pulls them back hard, wrists crossed, and secures another leather strap about her wrists. She cries out through the ball as he cinches the leather much too tightly so it digs into her wrists.

A black hood is pulled roughly down over her head and it pounds upon her shoulders with brutal force, making her alone with her terror. Her head swims, her heart pounds so hard, so fast, she's sure she's going to faint.

Racing heart slamming in her chest, breath fast through the holed ball, Catherine listens as her husband, then her son and daughter are secured as mercilessly.

xxx

The first moment that MPDC Officer Coco Martin realized something was wrong was when she heard the screams. She'd been directing traffic on the corner of 18th and Avenue M, near the intersection of Rhode Island and Connecticut Avenues NW, since 0800, coming on in the height of DC Rush Hour, the August heat already softening the asphalt under her feet.

The screams, from half a block to her right on the north/south street, are joined by squeals of tires and shouts of startled pedestrians as a man, dressed in dark pants and white shirt with equally dark tie bursts from the right side into the street. He dashes around suddenly halted cars and runs awkwardly toward them as she immediately extends her arms in urgent signal to halt traffic in both directions.

The man runs up the street, evading stopped cars as though they're trying to attack him and Coco hears Andrew on his radio calling for assistance. She knows, as the man makes a stumbling, screaming way, that she has no choice in her next move.

The stumbling man runs into the intersection.

"Wait!" She does the one thing her training has taught her never to do; she grabs his arm since the only other choice was to let him get past. She pulls him about and in a second the terror on his face etches itself into her mind before he shrieks.

He tries to push her hand off his arm, not fighting her effectively, and it only results in his falling to the ground which, in the baking morning sun, must be hot enough to cook him.

He covers his face to shut out – what? His screams rise in pitch and then with one arm he flails wildly as the other protects his face.

"Wait a minute!" She tries to get through, to assure him that he's in no danger. "Stop! No one's gonna hurt you!"

She'll never know if she might have gotten through to him for at that moment the horns from behind her start, then those from left, right and front, imbeciles filling the air with discordant blatts and blonts of frustrated jabber because they happen to be nine seconds late for whatever nonsense is so vital to them.

The man shrieks, throws his hands and arms over his head, tucks his legs up and bends his spine forward into so tight a fetal position she thinks it must hurt.

With every blatt and blare and onnnk he tightens further, screaming wildly, and Officer Coco Martin knows that for the foreseeable future no one is going anywhere.

xxx

Jimmy and Michelle enjoyed their Saturday midmorning at their favorite Georgetown Breakfast nook and a leisurely walk home, all set for a relaxing day off, phone off the hook, computer off, just blissful solitude. It's the close of a week that began with the 'Locked Room Mystery', which came hours after they'd returned from LA, and Michelle and her partners had spent the past five days of their nominal Suspension while working with Dr. Cranston, whom Agent DiNozzo persists in calling 'Doctor Kate's sister'. During this time they've also been helping out the other Alpha Shift Teams since they cannot work a case of their own. The Letter of the Law does have to be followed at some time - or at least in some fashion..

Now it's Saturday, they're free, breakfast out is a pleasant memory and they climb the three stories rather than use the elevator to their apartment. Michelle is mildly surprised that Jimmy chose to take the stairs, a significant change from his 'delicate condition' obsession, but she realizes the method to his madness when she gets three steps up and his hand snakes up under her miniskirt.

She yelps and, despite the heat, with cries for mercy, she runs up the steps with Jimmy in hot pursuit, very difficult in her red high heels with his hand constantly regaining it's target under her miniskirt despite her giggling efforts to escape. This time he's not driving her crazy with his excessive solicitousness, he's chosen an older way to drive her mad.

She slips on the third floor landing, and it's only the knowledge of what he'll do to her on the stairwell that makes her grasp the banister and yank herself up, still unable to keep his fingers away for more than a second in her mad run.

Darn his greater reach, longer legs and higher desperation!

x

She has to pull the fourth floor landing door inward and in that lost second he's beside her and pushes the crotch of her panties aside. But she bursts out of the stairwell and escapes him, runs to the far right corner, awkward in heels not meant to be run in, but the chase is too short. His longer legs overwhelm her efforts and before she can get her key into the door she's captured, giggling, pinned forward into the corner. His right hand snakes under her arm to cover her breast and the red heels betray her again, keeping her high so it's easy for him to slip his hand under her skirt despite her efforts to use her left hand behind to push his invading hand away. She can't protect her breast as his hand slips through her light windbreaker, not if she hopes to get the key into the lock and escape.

That she's giggling throughout her protests, not caring about the noise they're making, rather ruins the effectiveness of her struggles.

His fingers behind her push her moist panties aside as she shoves the key in. His index and ring fingers spread her lips, she twists the key and knob and gets in before his questing middle finger can.

But she can't make it through the doorway in time to block him out and backs away, a helpless captive as he closes and locks the door before turning on her.

She makes one final backward step and he's upon her. When she can't defeat his strength but is captured in his arms, she decides that giving in to his clinging to her body and pulling at her clothes isn't so bad, and she drops the pretense of wanting to escape.

But when he kisses her quite thoroughly she feels her skirt rise behind her, his hand slips along her panties and up, and he finds something he didn't need to discover: her Sig at the small of her back in her inner skirt holster.

x

"You're kidding," he exclaims as he pulls inches back, his face now above her as she's bent back. He's obviously amazed – he does amazed so well – that she was armed at breakfast.

"Am not," she counters, pressing her hands to his hard chest in a hopeless effort to hold him off, or at this moment up. "Aside from Carry Regs, I need to protect myself from rampaging Satyrs like you."

He reaches down further, his cupping hand invades her panties and she pushes away from the kiss - does he find discovering her armed to be an extra turn-on? - as if he needed it - but she can only bend her upper body back and his eyes slip down from hers.

"No," she says firmly, pushing against his too hard chest.

"No what?" he asks, holding her up with right hand clutching her cheek, left hand both supporting her back and unhooking her bra – how do guys develop that talent? Even as she pushes, the windbreaker has fallen away and the tiny firm bumps that spear her blouse are under his eyes. Some protection this already opened bra has been. The chase and touches, then firm grabs, make it so she can't deny the evidence displayed through her tightly disheveled blouse.

She pushes harder. "No, we are _not_ going to do the nasty on the living room carpet," she declares as she makes him let her straighten up - but his hand inside her panties still cups her left cheek, pressing her crotch to his. "If you insist on shagging me, at least do it on the shag." She has no intention of doing it there either; they'll use the bed and not because the white shag carpet has just been thoroughly cleaned of Alan Stephens.

She pushes away, escapes from his hand out of her panties, backs past the couch and left to the doorway to the short corridor of bathroom and closet. "Give me one minute to change out of these," she waves her hands over her blouse and miniskirt, "then I won't care if you rip the rest off."

"You'll care," he says as she starts down the short all, but she pokes her head back into the room.

"No, _you_ will. You're replacing everything you tear."

x

He lets his answer be a grin and she dashes down the short hall. He pauses, allowing her a slow count of fifteen before he'll chase and capture her. If she hasn't gotten enough off and safe, that's too bad.

The next sound he hears coming from the bedroom is her cell phone, and his mood is instantly shattered. It's Saturday mid-morning, they've worked OT every day this week, ten hour days, she with Kevin Lamb's team and the damned thing is playing 'Toccata and Fugue in D Minor'. But it runs for the full thirty seconds before she stops the notes.

He can't hear her low words through the two doorways, but he doesn't have to. He hears the sharp clap of her phone being slapped closed followed, quite distinctly now, by the most fiery blast of obscene Chinese epithets that he's heard in months.

xxx

Ten thousand impatient, anxious, rushing, apprehensive and determined people make use of Reagan Airport's massive Terminals this late Saturday morning, the fourth day of August, and though the perception is deceptive Tim McGee feels each and every one of them pass him and his wife Siobhan in the cavernous building. It seems every person on the East Coast has crammed into the steel and glass cave. Hundreds of people around them await planes or connections to same or arriving passengers, families or friends, loved and hated ones; and the fact that they're among said waiting does little for his mood.

According to the lighted chart over the distant ticket sales station, the plane from Connecticut has arrived on time. His wife's family should come through the gate a hundred yards before them in a matter of moments, but something doesn't feel right.

Something. Shav doesn't feel right. The anticipation of seeing her sister, brother-in-law and niece is there, but the flavor he feels from her isn't what he'd thought it would be after the past weeks of preparation.

Granted the preparation had been for October, as Tony DiNozzo will never forget for he's still paying the price of his curiosity and lack of discretion.

Originally Lenore had set up with Shav that they would watch six year old Bridget in October while the Morehouses were to go to Florida on a Second Honeymoon. Now the journey is to Utah, the divergence and rescheduling connected to her husband Bill's promotion and the need to open and set up a house, arrange schooling and the thousand other things connected with moving over a thousand miles away.

A little over two weeks ago the woman had called to announce the change in plans. The trip would be made today, not in October as they'd originally planned and been prepared for, and they would take charge of little Bridget in mid-Summer rather than the cooler - and statistically less busy - Fall. This change in plans had come in while he was tied up with James Sullivan and his designed-for-murder drone, immediately after which the team was Suspended and they'd taken a most surprising Pacific cruise, to be hard followed by the 'Mystery of the Locked Wall'. He'd make that totally surprising case into a book, as the ending had been exceptional, except he's already working on his fourth. Still, a fifth book could be in the works, and L.J. Tibbs' team could use an infusion of new blood.

Thank God that the Suspensions are a thing of the past, thanks this past week to Dr. Rachel Cranston, sister of their late teammate Kate Todd. She'd met with all five agents plus Abby and Jimmy, at no little trouble due to the chaotic schedules over extended days, and if she did or did not fudge the final results he doesn't want to know about it.

Things, at least at NCIS, are back to normal - what's that? - after solving that locked room mystery, as evidenced by this very busy week. The team hadn't been able to work on a case of their own, but since the eleven other teams had worked eleven cases while they'd cruised – and done more – in the Pacific, the five agents had spread out over these past five days to enhance their colleagues. Gibbs had bolstered Melanie Kelman's team, itself something Tim would have paid good money to watch closely since Gibbs had to take second place under the much younger and newly minted SSA Kelman, while Tony assisted with Fred Higgins' workload and Ziva had aided Rosa Arnell's Beta Shift team. He and Michelle had worked with Kevin Lamb and Lisa DuBois during Janet Levy's continued convalescence.

He thinks for some moments of the woman, no longer hospitalized and being tended by her parents. He'd visited her a few days ago and what he'd seen hadn't inspired hope. Something in the woman he knew hadn't carried into this new phase of her life. Whatever it is that defines an Agent, and he has yet to quantitatively identify what that is, is changed in her.

Will she return to NCIS? He prays she will, both for the recovery and restoration of her spirit, but only time and prayer will tell them.

x

"Timmy?" Though she speaks to him, Shav's staring at the distant gate where, for a few moments, it stands vacant, left between bustling crowds.

"Yes?" He comes back to the present, hoping he hasn't been missed.

"This is as good a time to mention it. You weren't truly long around my family in March."

"No. I'm sorry." First there was the Case of the Romulan Assassin Zabeth, then the Wedding itself, the Reception, delayed departure and thus the rush to this airport. Details became a bit of a blur despite his best efforts. "I know I should've–"

"Oh, no, hon, I didn't mean it that way. I just wanted to mention - not that it's important - but Bridget, it's silly, but she - I don't even know why I'm bringing it up now."

"What?" Her brogue is sharpened, not so anyone else would notice it, but he knows her well enough to read her feelings now in what she says, but in the unconscious inflections. Shav's not usually scattered; in fact, she's frequently more clear thinking than he is, but she's not comfortable now, and it's not anything serious, but

"Well, it's... silly, but..."

"What?"

"Well..." He can hear that it's going to come out as an admission. "The fact is that Bridget can never seem to get my name right."

'Not get Siobhan right?' "What does she call you?" he asks with a smile.

"AUNT SHABBY!" screeches from the gate to the far rear of the terminal with such force as only a six year old's lungs can drive it. Siobhan turns in time to see that the next crowd has already begun to emerge and a small rocket launches from the knot of startled passengers who had been in front of her before parting like a launch gate, the diminutive missile targeting her with deadly accuracy. Tim can virtually see the smoke trail.

Siobhan takes half a step forward, kneels on her right knee with leg behind anchoring her, left leg squared and braced, an instant before the warp speed collision.

Tim feels his own skeleton reverberate in sympathetic harmony as Shav's arms encircle Bridget and the girl launches a high pitched spiel that few professional Auctioneers can attain on how excited she is to see her and attempting to tell her every possible detail concerning the flight. Tim misses every third word and isn't too sure about the others.

x

Siobhan had gripped the juggernaut at the instant of impact to prevent her from bouncing off and now watches over the ecstatic girl's shoulder as her sister Lenore and Bill Morehouse separate from the scattering throng and approach them in a more human manner. Bill, a short man who, in Tim's opinion, could benefit from several months in a gym, follows a half step behind his wife.

Lenore, taller than her husband, looks to Tim much like her younger sibling, similar red hair and build, with some distinctions of face he can only think of as 'hardness' as opposed to Shav's 'softness'. Tim had little enjoyed the years they were together while he was a Junior and Senior and dating the young aspiring Writer and vivacious Cheerleader at Bethesda High. It's not anything he can really fault Lenore for, but he remembers a manipulative upper classwoman and, from what little he's come to know of her in the past two years, the older sister is little changed.

Tim greets the couple, determined to be civil while his wife works her way to her feet, an exceptional challenge against the clinging, madly babbling six year old who seems determined to bring her up to date on every second since their mid-March nuptials in a single breath.

x

"We're so sorry to do this to you," Lenore tells him, the picture of contrition Tim doesn't believe. "We only have an hour lay-over but way over there on the other end of the terminal. Thank you for taking care of Bridget this week."

"No problem." This he can say without hesitation, because he views seven days with the babbling powerhouse as less of a chore than an hour with her mother.

Siobhan manages to shush her niece for a few moments, long enough to greet her older sister and brother-in-law with hugs and kisses, but that and a few short sentences are all the leeway the girl seems willing to give. "Aunt Shabby Uncle Timothy it's going to be so much fun I've been looking forward for weeks and weeks and weeks to see you Micky says he doesn't believe we were going boy will he be surprised did you know we're moving to Utah we came in a huge plane have you ever been on a plane we could see everything when we flew in we flew over so many cities but I knew this was Washington because it's so white and I had snacks on the plane they fed us roast beef, salad, corn, roll and _chocolate pudding_ and I could get up and walk around and–"

"Bridget!" from her mother halts the deluge. "You'll talk Aunt Shabby's ears off."

x

The girl looks up at her mother, turns to Siobhan and says sadly and with utter contrition "I'm sorry I hurt your ears."

Charmed, Siobhan comes down on one knee and uses her hands to smooth the girl's disarrayed brown hair. In that and her eyes she'd taken after her father. "Nooooo. That's all right, honey, you didn't really talk them off."

"I like the way you talk, aunt Shabby," she says with a smile that seems to wrap itself about her face. "You don't talk a bit like mommy."

That Tim can agree with. Though both women were born in Ireland and the O'Mallory family had immigrated when Shav was nine, Lenore eleven, they'd taken quite different paths. Siobhan had tightly embraced the land of her birth in culture, manner and language while Lenore had determinedly assimilated, sloughing off the 'Old Country' in favor of the 'American Way'. In the few words the woman had spoken he'd detected no trace of the 'Old Sod', as though she'd carved that portion of her out of her life.

The years have etched these and other differences into them to the extent that the women are more alike in appearance than within.

He's heard Connecticut coming from Bridget's mouth, and on some undefined level Tim is sad.

"No, no I don't," Shav says, continuing to brush Bridget's hair with her hands, her brogue bringing the O's to a much rounder tone while stresses are on the consonants. "And while we're on it, I think it's time you can pronounce my name right. It's Siobhan," she says, accentuating the 'sha - vaughn'. "Can you say that? Siobhan?"

"Siobhan."

"That's right," she says, quite contented to get past it, but Bridget is giving her blank face.

"Then why does mommy say you're Shabby?"

x

Her eyes shift slowly up to the standing couple. Lenore looks like she would like the floor to open up under her and in those seconds Tim, who knows his wife so well, sees what thoughts she's not revealing to the child. But the gaze she turns back to Bridget and the smile she favors her with are as kind as ever. "I don't know, dear."

"Is that like when mommy says you're a nun? Ooops, I mean 'should be' a nun?"

"Really?" She hugs the child, but the gaze Bridget can't see Tim isn't sure is icy or fiery. He knows the temperature for his wife within himself, however, but he remains as silent as Bill. But when Shav releases the girl and Bridget can see her again her face is as bright as ever. "No, honey, I'm not a Nun. I'll explain it all to you later."

"Okay." Siobhan starts to rise, the polished floor being quite hard through her skirt but Bridget halts her halfway up when she says "But mommy says you're not allowed to teach me any Irish. I'm _English_ ," she announces with such pride as only a child can attain.

"Really," she says, holding the crouch, and this time her tone is empty. Though she says it to Bridget, Tim can hear the coolness invade her tone and realizes that she's having a hard time keeping warm for the girl with the ice growing in her blood. When she does straighten the warmth she'd shown her niece is absent from her face. The balance struck, in fact, leaves no temperature at all and her tone, sweet for Bridget's ears, doesn't match her words. "An bhfuil náiriú tú ag dom, nó le tú féin?"

x

"Perhaps," Bill Morehouse says, "we should get on to the Gate."

"Good idea," Tim says, his tone carefully neutral, for while Shav's had been kind, her eyes had blazed. She'd asked if her sister was shamed by her, or by herself, and any possible answer to that would not do Bridget a bit of good. "You wouldn't want to miss your flight. Nice seeing you again." He shakes hands with the man, reading in his expression all the humiliation he has to. He's frequently felt sorry for his brother-in-law; however, for the sake of family harmony over the head of the child, it's a good idea to separate the sisters. "Good luck in your job. Have a good flight."

"Nice seeing you again. Lenore, let's go."

Their parting from their daughter is heartfelt, the purest emotions displayed thus far. Bridget has the hardest time, which delays the departure for several minutes, but eventually the Morehouses are lost to view, Bridget waving frantically well beyond the last second.

"So, honey," Siobhan says, crouching rather than kneeling again, "we're going to have a whole week together. What would you like to do first?" They know that the first experiences the girl has will help against the separation pain she already feels.

"I don't know." She's already morose and Tim pulls out his cell phone to check the time. They have no definite plans for the day, having left the morning to wherever it leads. He finds the unit off and switches it on, half an ear turned to the conversation under him. Ten fifty six, the screen says, but as he partially puts the unit away again it rings. A look at the screen makes him sigh.

x

NCIS uses a system of his own devising and he'd long ago begun to wonder if that brainchild had become a mistake. If one Agent calls another and cannot make a connection, the caller's unit will keep trying until the target phone comes on, then alert both ends. When he reads the name of said caller, he feels no better than the girl does.

"Oh, no." He knows he has only seconds before the connection is made, and in fact it's only nine seconds. He turns on the speaker feature; Shav might as well hear whatever this is. "Yes, boss?"

/McGee, where've you been?/ demands the voice from out of the speaker. He's not given time to answer this aggravated inquiry for Gibbs immediately continues with /you're needed in MTAC./

He restrains himself from saying either 'It's Saturday after a fifty hour week' or 'If MTAC has a problem they have Technicians, and Cyber Crime can fix anything.' He knows it's not a technical issue. "Boss, we're at Reagan Airport picking up our niece and we have only the one car."

He can read Siobhan's thought in her expression but before the woman can speak a voice from near her hips pipes up. "Can I see where you work? Huh, can I? Can I? Pretty please? Huh? Can I? _Pretty_ please?"

He looks down, rather impressed by her perceptiveness and swearing he'll never introduce her to Sammy Sky. Just the thought of those two in the same room fills him with dread.

"No, I'm sorry. Your aunt Siobhan can drop me off and the two of you can go somewhere."

"But I've never seen a Maktak!"

He restrains a chuckle; Gibbs is still on the line and can certainly hear every word, but then he decides "You know, sure. Why not? I'm sure you two can find plenty of things to do in the Navy Yard for however long this takes." He hopes that time will be brief indeed and looks to the phone in his hand. "Boss, I'll be ri–"

The dial tone cuts him off.


	2. Need to Know

Chapter Two  
Need To Know

The Navy Yard at the District's south is miles from the western corner through too much tourist traffic, but when Tim arrives at the bullpen he finds it fully staffed.

"Nice of you to join us, McGee."

He restrains himself from saying that, on a Saturday near noon with over fifty hours already under his belt, it really is nice of him.

x

The trip in had been interesting. Shav had sat in the back seat, and Bridget's presence had made him very much aware of his driving. He'd paid much greater attention to the road than to the pair behind him, so only one exchange had stuck with him.

'I'm surprised,' was all he'd had to say, but the brief look he gave his wife was enough to communicate to her what the girl shouldn't perceive. 'Mommy says you're not allowed to teach me any Irish,' Bridget had announced with childlike innocence at the airport, not knowing what a hotbed she was preparing when she'd said 'I'm _English_.'

It was her mother's rule, and therefore to be observed, but he knows his wife.

'There's a branch of the clan, descendants of the O'Cathain sept of County Derry,' she'd glanced at Bridget, 'by marriage through your great-great-aunt Rachael.' Looking forward to him, she'd explained 'Their motto is Felis Demulcta Milis.'

Having stopped there, she'd waited for the inevitable when the child had asked 'Aunt Siobhan, what's that mean?'

'What does,' she'd corrected with abundant kindness. 'It means 'The Stroked Cat is Meek'.'

Bridget had thought about it for a time and finally confessed 'I don't get it.'

To which Shav had smiled and assured her 'She will.'

x

"What'd I miss?" he asks as he heads toward his desk, too aware of the stares from his partners. None of their greetings are as kind as Gibbs'.

"Nothing yet," the senior Agent says, picks up his phone, presses a contact, then hangs up. "Come on."

As Gibbs comes around his desk and leads the way out of the enclave, Tim has a moment to scan the faces of his colleagues and decides he's only joined the ranks of the put out. Michelle Palmer is the last one out and he hesitates for a moment, surprised at the glare she gives him. But he falls in step with her; Gibbs is already on the stairs and taking them two at a time.

"So where are they?" Michelle asks quietly, though he's seen her forcefully push something down before she spoke.

"Shav's taking her on a tour," he whispers as they follow Tony and Ziva. "What's going on?"

"I don't know. It's a Deep, Dark Secret. I've been here for over an hour, twiddling my thumbs and trying not to attract Gibbs' attention." Her tone says more clearly than words her feelings about having waited this hour.

"Sorry."

"I'm not blaming you," she says as she walks beside him. "I'm just blaming you." She only moves her eyes to look sideways up to him. "Smart not to ask."

x

They have Gibbs' attention now; he's waiting at the open MTAC door and very clearly doesn't like playing doorman. They hurry to make up the time behind Tony and Ziva.

Gibbs stops being a doorman as soon as DiNozzo is almost in reach, but as the two men and two women follow their leader down the ramp into the well they find Director Jennifer Shepherd standing backed by the huge Multi-Threat Analysis Center screen in test pattern, the vertical bars in rainbow stripes, the effect being the same as a white light slightly better illuminating the dim room.

"Take your seats."

Since none of them have particular favorites they line up in the first row. Tim would have taken the fourth, leaving Michelle split from them in the opposite set of four so he goes around her instead, sits down at her left. Too soon before they're settled the main screen lights with two images, one the formal portrait of a blue uniformed Naval Captain, several medals highlighting his blue jacket. The medals are distinctive because they start with the Navy and Marine Corps Medal and the others are all non-Combat related awards.

The man appears to be in his early 50's; they'll reserve judgment until they learn the age of the photo. He wears gold framed glasses, itself an interesting distinction on a military portrait, and the inch of graying hair at his temples helps give him a studious impression. The image beside it is a DC street intersection, at the moment undetermined, but three MPDC vehicles block traffic and seven uniformed officers keep their distance from the huddled form laying in fetal position near the crosswalk. None of the agents can see his head, protected as it is by his arms, but none need to.

x

"At 8:04 this morning Captain Thomas Benes, assigned to the Naval Research Laboratory, suffered an apparent psychotic episode while eating breakfast in a restaurant near his home. He ran out into traffic screaming incoherently. Metro Police Officers on the scene at 18th and Avenue M, where a synchronization problem at traffic lights was causing backups at two intersections, managed to secure the area to prevent him from being injured. They called for backup from the adjacent intersection of Rhode Island and Connecticut Avenues NW. He wasn't violent, he assumed the protective position you see here for quite some time. Witnesses described him as 'absolutely terrified' but no one could establish a cause for his condition.

"He tried to resist as an ambulance crew came. He did not fight the officers and EMTs, certainly not as a Navy Captain would be expected to battle, more wild and desperate struggle while screaming. They managed to restrain him without injuring him and took him to Monroe University Hospital; 22nd, New Hampshire and L Streets NW."

In her eyes, as she glances at DiNozzo, they see her acknowledgment that she hardly needs the specifics. They know that location well. DiNozzo had spent enough time there in the Undercover persona of Tony DiNardo, and in the months since that assignment he's spent far more time. "They succeeded in sedating him, but until then any attempt to assist or move him triggered further panic episodes.

"He was not in uniform, which according to the Pentagon is fortunate as will become apparent in a moment. His status was determined at Monroe; that hospital being only a few blocks from where the incident took place. When he was identified, they contacted his Command per his ID, who notified us.

"Your orders are simple, though of course the method is not. Find out what happened to him."

"What was his assignment?" is the first thing Gibbs wants to know.

Annoyance and frustration are barely restrained. "When you find out, be sure to tell me. I've run head first into the 'National Security, Need-to-Know' wall that makes our lives so very interesting. No one knows if he had a breakdown, why or anything else about him. I'm going to work my sources, but until I make some headway, you are to try to ascertain his condition and what can be done about it."

xxx

With that unsatisfactory answer and thus a more complex assignment than it had been at first look, Gibbs and his Team arrive at the side parking lot of Monroe University Hospital. As they get out of the yellow and black Hemi and the black Stratus, Gibbs looks to DiNozzo, who had driven the Stratus. "Ring her up. See what she knows."

The subject of this seemingly obscure order is one Dr. Jeanne Benoit, Resident and a major resource of available information. That she is more to Tony than this simple essence concerns Gibbs not at all. He cares only that she is a significant person in this facility and if she knows anything he'll be most happy to pull it out. If not, there are several other methods of securing the information and he'll run through them in turn.

"Already did, Boss," DiNozzo assures him, earning an impatient stare. Rule Number 29 is 'Anticipate every possibility' and the fact that they're at Monroe means that at some time the good Doctor and his better friend will be called upon, so he'd decided to initiate the contact on the way over. Ziva will say nothing of the conversation she'd overheard before the discussion turned to National Security. "She'll meet us in the lobby."

xx

The lobby of this complex is like every other hospital lobby they've ever seen, regardless of architecture. It's sunny, cheery, multi-colored, people friendly and smells too much like a hospital.

True to his word, or that would be hers, Dr. Benoit greets them at the entrance. Clad in white Physician's coat and ubiquitous stethoscope over light pink blouse and complimenting skirt, she doesn't ignore Gibbs though all can see her main focus is the Senior Field Agent. Nothing in her manner presents a personal connection any more than the married agents on the team do when encountering their better halves in public, but though the connection is understated to the point of being invisible, it is distinctly present to those who know where to look.

"Agent Gibbs, I looked into your man. I wasn't on duty in Emergency when he came in so I had to do some checking. He came in in a highly agitated condition and no one could work on him. He was brought to the Psych Ward where it took three Orderlies twice his size to restrain him. He wasn't violent, not dangerous to anyone except perhaps himself, but he had to be sedated. Doctor Grantwood is his Attending Physician."

"Where is he?"

Knowing to whom she speaks, having become particularly acquainted with him last month aboard the Pacific Princess, she turns and leads the group to the elevators.

xx

Psych Ward covers the east wing of the fourth floor and is accessed at various points, but the one they use is in the north end, through two sets of double doors, first set blue, next set red, that suggest nothing less than an airlock separating this realm from the rest of the hospital. These doors are set in stages, the second set cannot be opened until the first is sealed. This area constitutes the equivalent of Intensive Care for the ward, separate from the main body which extends south and westward.

What is presented to them is a long corridor with six rooms to a side, large windows admitting views to each, though the blinds are controlled from the corridor rather than inside. The red doors at the far end provide another access to the main ward. The inner doors no sooner close behind Benoit and the five agents when the left door at the end of the corridor opens and an elderly woman in a long white coat steps out with the assistance of two silver canes, and she is followed by two men clad in white, the ubiquitous uniform of an Orderly.

"Here's Doctor Grantwood," Benoit says to Gibbs as they close the last yards.

x

Veronica Grantwood is the antithesis of every preconception the agents had created. Older than Gibbs, possibly older than he and DiNozzo combined, she stands unbowed with the aid of twin forearm supporting canes but the compassion in her manner is balanced by fierce intelligence that shines through her piercing eyes. DiNozzo thinks that if she were to hint her eyes are not what they had once been, he would conclude they had been diamond cutters.

"Doctor Grantwood," Benoit greets, the identification hardly necessary but enhanced by the black embroidered cursive lettering over the coat's pocket, "these people are –."

"NCIS Agents, here to consult on Captain Benes," the woman finishes with a wry smile. She hadn't intentionally cut off her colleague, but the white on black caps that the men have already removed have made identification as easy for the woman, though few they greet identify them with such astuteness. "I'm afraid I don't know you gentlemen, I only recognize Special Agents Ziva David and Michelle Palmer."

"I am sorry," Ziva says, "to say that I do not remember you."

"Oh, we've never met. When I'd heard that NCIS was going to be here, I recalled a segment in a recent issue of 'We' magazine and looked it up. 'Women Crime Fighters in the Military'; you are both in it."

"We're flattered you remember," Michelle tells her, trying to focus on the honor and not to think of the disaster that had followed the publication of those articles.

Gibbs is impressed, not many would have made the connection, he thinks. In some ways she recalls to him Victoria Mallard, who at 95 also shows no sign of being slowed by years, though he's relieved that Grantwood's is a much more sedate persona. "What did you find out about Captain Benes?"

"I haven't been able to examine him yet. When he was brought in he was agitated though not violent, nor was he dangerous, at least to anyone but himself. I was obliged to prescribe Midazolam, which has calmed him. Unfortunately, I have four other patients in this Ward so I had to deal with some of them while Captain Benes calmed."

"You say 'agitated but not violent', doctor," Gibbs' manner is equally sedate, as it often is when dealing with seniors of the opposite sex, as he summarizes what little of the matter has become clear.

"He seems primarily fearful, though of what has yet to be determined."

"Would I be able to see him?"

"Through the room window only. No one may enter the room, not until I have made at least an initial determination. However, all of our rooms are monitored, and I can let you watch on the Closed Circuit. Once I have made my initial assessment, we shall see."

The woman's words are neither forceful nor challenging, mere declarations of what will and will not happen, to which Gibbs' only answer is "Would you show us to the monitor room?"

"Right this way."

x

The Monitor Room is actually the room she and her associates had stepped out from, sixth room on the left, opposite a Medication Room partially seen through the half open door. The Monitor Room is manned by a white jacketed man. Nine being too many to fit comfortably into the room, McGee and Palmer wait outside the door with the two Orderlies.

The room contains two banks of five monitors, three of which on the top row are active, two on the bottom. In this way, no room is unattended even for an instant. Benes's room is the fourth one displayed on the lower level, the room being on the right from the entrance. Gibbs had noted as they passed that the blinds were drawn over that window.

Benes sits on the thickly padded off-white floor, and while he's restrained in the heavy canvas jacket that forces him to hug himself, his head darts from side to side, his eyes perhaps seeking dangers only he can see.

"Is there sound?" DiNozzo asks. The man seated before the twin banks reaches over and turns a dial. The man's breathing, short and sharp, sounds clearly from the speaker before he lowers the volume again.

"We have 'round-the-clock coverage," he says, "and the mikes are sensitive enough to record a whisper."

"Now if you'll excuse me," Grantwood says, "I shall see what I may do for your friend."

In so sense hobbling, the woman propels herself on her two canes out the door.

xx

"Captain Benes?" Grantwood calls, her voice mild, from a few feet away from her patient. Restrained as he is, it is still foolhardy to assume he is not dangerous before even the first evaluation can be made. The Midazolam should have calmed him, but in her career Veronica Grantwood has been surprised several times too often.

In the heavily padded room, sound is softened and yet she knows it comes through clearly to the monitor room. However, aside from her voice, the straight jacketed man's heavy breathing is stentorian in the otherwise silent room. The two Orderlies stand by the door, unobtrusive but ready to take action the moment the restrained man appears to present a danger to the elderly woman. Secured as he is, the heavy canvas material holding his arms securely in a tight hug, things would seem quite safe, yet they must maintain strict vigilance.

Grantwood is seated in a folding chair, not so deep that she cannot rise quickly, her canes resting at her right hip. She is seven feet from the man, extra cautious of the stranger until she can learn his responses, but even then she will not let down her guard.

Benes, on the other hand, doesn't seem intent upon being a danger to anyone. He casts occasional glances at the old woman, suspicion merely a foundation for naked fear. He presses backward against the thick padded wall, his glances at the woman only slightly more frequent than at the two burly men by the door, but every look is sparked by fear of seeing them and apprehension of danger if he doesn't check them.

"Captain Benes?" she says again with what seems inexhaustible patience. Patience is the essence of all encounters. It is a rare initial session that proceeds at any significant pace. On most occasions an hour is not long enough to establish an initial connection. Some patients don't even look at her in the first three, yet Benes' looks are sparked by fear that she'll attack him.

It is fortunate that Grantwood has the rank to set her own schedule.

"Captain Benes, do you hear me?"

Again that look, that utter terror.

"Captain?"

He starts each time she speaks to him, withdraws deeper into the padding, grows more frightened by the moment, his breath ragged. He tries to work his way toward the far corner, not daring to look away as he does. Restrained as he is in the thickly padded room, were he to reach the corner there would be no place to go.

x

In the Observation Room Gibbs and his team watch closely.

"The man's a nineteen year Officer," DiNozzo says. "Now he's a frightened..." Description fails.

Grantwood looks as though she'll spend infinite time trying to get through to the man, but as they watch he tries to push further into the padded wall.

/Captain, do you know where you are?/ Still those terrified glances, that hideous withdrawal, that ragged panting. /Can you understand me?/

"McGee, Palmer," Gibbs says, his voice tight, "get down to where he was eating, find out everything they have."

McGee, happy for the opportunity to leave the chilling scene, hesitates only a half step to allow Michelle to proceed. She seems as gratified to leave.

Gibbs turns to the man controlling the monitors. His name tag says T. O'Hara. "We need to collect everything he has, whatever was on him when he came in."

"Clothes and personal effects. I understand. I'll ask the Doctor. You should be able to get them."

"I want our Forensic Scientist to examine his blood and anything else, see if she can find something there."

"That's not my call," O'Hara says. "Thus far we have only a sample for the lab, and it took three men with him already in the jacket to get that much from his leg."

x

Inside the room Grantwood continues to try to elicit some response from Benes, but he continues to cower from her, trembling against the wall. Ultimately she uses the canes to boost herself up and leads the Orderlies out of the room, sealing the door behind her. Gibbs steps out to meet her in the hallway.

"I'm sorry, Agent Gibbs. In many circumstances I can get some response, but your Captain Benes is not ready."

Gibbs wants to ask when the man will be ready, but some answers are impossible to give. Instead, he pulls from a compartment in his Shield ID case his business card. "Please call me when there's any change. We have to talk to him as soon as possible.

"Anything else?" Grantwood asks, conveying the distinct impression that as long as he's asking for the unlikely, the impossible might as well be considered.

"Yes. I understand you were able to get a blood sample from him."

"Yes?" she asks, voice drowning in suspicion, or perhaps she's reading ahead.

"We'll need that."

"Why? It's scheduled for testing."

"Along with samples from all over this hospital. Our Forensic Scientist has equipment your lab people can only dream of, and can also do the analysis in a fraction of the time."

Her close gaze could peer into his soul. "Agent Gibbs, you strike me as having come from a line of horse traders."

"A few."


	3. You Don't Need to Know

Chapter Three  
You Don't Need To Know

Acropolis Restaurant offers the impression of long establishment, the front awning declaring that the full range of daily meals are served but there's little view though plate glass windows covered with enticements and menus. When Tim and Michelle enter they find the cashier counter on their immediate right is wommaned by a middle aged cashier, gray hair creeping in, though her face has been spared the ravages of years.

Six booths run the length of the right wall before an elevated plasma TV set above a serving window. Along the left side, after two booths set in from the front window, is a long counter before coffee/tea machines and clear glass cooling stations that display a selection of deserts and treats.

Along the right each booth is illuminated by faux Tiffany stained glass dome lamps while five slimmer ones run the length of the counter. The paintings beside the booths are of vased flowers and these alternate with foot high ceramic rectangles of individual flowers of several varieties.

"Good afternoon. Table for two?"

"Not exactly," McGee says as they display their shields and ID folders. He introduces himself and his partner, then continues with: "We're investigating the incident this morning with Captain Thomas Benes."

Her expression falls. "Yes, the police were in here a while ago, but I had the feeling we would see you. Thomas has been coming here for years. None of us knew what to make of… whatever it was. GEORGE?" she calls into the restaurant.

There are three customers, two in a booth near the end and a man seated at the counter. At the far end a man clad in white shirt and black pants, a white apron tied around his waist, talks casually with two young women, each of them in white short sleeved blouses and pocketed black aprons that blend into black skirts. George leaves the last stool and approaches.

"Welcome," the man, of an age with the woman beside them, evidently anticipates new paying customers and turns on his charm. Tim finds it notable that neither of the women were summoned even though they had been conversing with the man.

This time it's Michelle, keeping to their usual division of duties for interviews, who explains their identities and purpose for being here on this early afternoon.

x

"Yes, I do not know what happened," George explains with a heavy Greek accent, guiding them to the second of the booths opposite the register. Tim takes the seat facing the body of the restaurant, Michelle enters her side first before George and thus facing the window, this arrangement giving them the full view of the room as well as the door. "Captain Benes is in two, three times per week for breakfast. Today was no different from any other except that halfway through his meal he screamed and ran out. He left his uniform jacket, his briefcase, everything."

"Where are they now?" Tim asks. If what happened to him has something to do with his work, this will give them a clue. At any rate, Navy materials should not be in civilian hands.

"I have them in my office," he says with a wave over his shoulder toward the food pick up window.

A man and woman enter and are greeted by the cashier and then by the blonde waitress who guides them to a booth along the right wall. The brunette woman takes a place behind the counter, possibly in anticipation of the lunch crowd.

"We'll need to take those with us," Tim tells him when the new guests are out of range.

"Of course, of course.

"Did you wait on him?" Michelle asks.

"Wha- me, no. Debra has his table, she wait on him."

"Is Debra here?"

He points to the black haired younger woman who had moved behind the counter. "It is slow now, the lunch crowd picks up soon, but she been here since opening. She get off in an hour, you can talk with her then."

"We'll talk with her now," Michelle assures him, impressing her partner, who wonders if she's channeling Ziva or Gibbs. "May we use your office?"

"Iiiiii, errr, guess so."

xx

Debra Zapigna is an attractive brunette whose hair is drawn back into a pony tail, then reversed upward and pinned. The white blouse doesn't close smoothly, allowing Tim a glimpse as she sits down at the other side of the desk and he considers that her assignment is a good choice for the breakfast crowd. It's helpful to have someone displaying such qualities as the front person for when new visitors enter. Right now, seated in a chair opposite him where they've commandeered the boss' office in the room beyond the kitchen while Michelle stands near the door to prevent intrusion, she doesn't seem like a front person for anything.

When they had been escorted by George into the office and identified themselves as Federal Agents, she'd lost a good measure of her confident facade. After the door was closed, Michelle went briefly to a table by the left wall where a jacket and briefcase lay, Zapigna had gone into a notable decline.

"I didn't do anything wrong," is the first thing out of her mouth.

"We're not saying you did," he assures her, leaving out every note of sincerity. Perhaps she's completely innocent, perhaps even clueless, but he'll decide that after their conference, not before, and not be swayed by any possible charms. Sometimes when someone goes into a meeting with Federal Agents with apprehension shining on their face there's a good reason. "We're here investigating what happened to Captain Benes, not trying to point fingers at anyone."

"Yet," Michelle says from the table, sparking another bout of apprehension in the young woman's eyes. Yes, definitely channeling Ziva. He wishes they had a 'be yourself' signal, and decides they're going to have to work at that – later.

x

"Tom– Captain Benes is nice. I don't know what happened to him."

"How well do you know him?"

"I don't. Not really. I wait on him two or three times a week, we chat but the mornings are busy so no."

"What happened this morning?"

"I don't _know_. He came in, he had his usual #2; scrambled eggs, sausage and hash browns, coffee and orange juice. Perfectly normal morning."

"Did he eat all of it?"

"Yes. I asked him if he wanted anything else, he said he wanted another coffee so I went back to get it, but another customer stopped me, he wanted something more. I got it, then got the coffee when suddenly he _screamed._ I didn't know what was happening. He got up, stumbling, making like he wanted to go in a hundred directions at once, you know? Everything seemed to frighten him, he was backing away from everything, screaming, and suddenly he charged out, almost broke the door, and that's the last I saw of him. George took his stuff, put it over there," she points to a table where a Navy jacket lies upon a briefcase, both of which Michelle had inspected before posting herself by the door.

"I don't know what was wrong."

"Did he display any unusual symptoms during his meal?"

"Not that I noticed."

"Did you notice anything odd?"

"No."

"What was done with the plates and cups, the utensils?" He knows the depressing answer, but perhaps miracles do happen.

She shrugs. "Well, everything was cleaned up, the booth ready for the next customer. Lenny, the bus boy, took everything into the kitchen, it was washed..."

Miracles do happen, as Shav frequently reminds him, but they didn't today.

xxx

Gibbs, DiNozzo and David have traveled south to the Naval Research Laboratory on Overlook Avenue SW, south of the Navy Yard across the Anacostia. It's not a base as the layman thinks of one, nor is it a fenced in community. The main building, in from Clara Barton Parkway between Kitty Hawk and Caarderock, looks remarkably civilian and to the unpracticed eye the entire complex resembles a College Campus.

The base is devoted to Scientific and Military Research, and the last time they'd been here it had been in pursuit of Private Harold Kurland, their prime suspect in the assault and rape of Special Agent Janet Levy.

He'd hoped not to be back so soon, at least not until Levy recovered from her injuries and the lingering question of her retention or resignation from NCIS was settled. However, he's used to his wishes not being granted.

x

In short order the three Agents are admitted by Corporal Betty Danvers, the white uniformed, dark haired young woman in her late twenties who is Aide to the C.O., into the sanctum of Captain William Malone. She had gone from curious at their unexpected arrival to barely hidden annoyance at the sight of DiNozzo, who had made efforts to engage her last time. Then she'd pointedly ignored him, touching the intercom button to announce them to her chief.

When they enter, the Captain rises from behind his desk. "I'd hoped that the last time I saw you was the last time," is how the uniformed man greets them.

"You know what they say about bad pennies, Captain," Gibbs says, taking the offered seat. There are only two, so DiNozzo stands close to the door, removed from direct line but well positioned to observe.

"They keep coming back."

"No, that they're more expensive than you want them to be."

He surrenders the point. "When we heard what happened to Captain Benes I expected a visit from NCIS, if not you three in particular."

Last time Gibbs had been here it had been himself and DiNozzo, accompanied by SSA Kevin Lamb, Janet Levy's team leader. He doesn't anticipate this meeting to run any more smoothly.

"What can you tell us about Benes? What was he working on?"

"I can't tell you that."

"And what he's doing that bears on what happened to him?"

"I'm sorry. Beyond admitting the obvious, that Captain Benes is stationed here, there's not much I can tell you. And before you say anything, it doesn't come from me. Captain Benes's project is Classified Top Secret."

"We have Level One Security Clearances." Gibbs' tone says that this is more than a simple reminder. "If necessary, we can get all the authorizations we need."

"Agent Gibbs, when he was first elected and inaugurated it took three months to get Clearance to Read _Obama_ into a redacted Summary of this. Bush never even got that far, neither of them, though the project was started in H's time."

"'I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you'," Tony quotes.

"Agent DiNozzo, this is one of the few things in the U.S. where, if you did find out, I would have to."

x

"All right," Gibbs says, unwilling to belabor the point. He'll let Shepherd play her Capital Hill card or whatever it'll take. "Tell us what you can that we can survive. We need to know if there was anything unusual that happened to or around him. Did anything change? Did he seem distressed, out of sorts, uncharacteristic in any way?"

"Not that I know of. When I found out I instituted an Investigation which didn't turn up much."

For the few hours since breakfast, he's not surprised, though he does consider his own people better qualified to run any investigation than the scientists who infest this complex could be. "We need to talk to whoever was closest to him, both on his Project and socially."

"I can let you talk to the top Officers of his team, provided you don't encroach upon the details of the Project. He lived alone, no family. I don't know any of his friends. Last I saw him he didn't seem unduly stressed, that is any more so than normal, though the Project he heads up brings more than enough tension with it."

"Where will we find his team?"

"You can meet with them here." He reaches for the intercom on his desk. "Corporal Danvers, please have Lieutenants Mark Atkinson, James Holhouse, Christopher Nugent and Private Patricia Court report here immediately." He breaks the connection. "I want to hear this as much as you do."

"Three Lieutenants and a Private?"

"Atkinson is Marine, Holhouse and Nugent are Navy, Private Court was Benes's Aide, a competent scientist in her own right. He needed more than a Secretary on – something this complex."

x

Court is more than that, and the reason for that is what surprises him. When last they were here he and Lamb had interviewed her in connection with Private Kurland, and in that interview she had raised several Red Flags. He considers it significant, with several thousand Scientists and Technicians in this complex, that her name should come up again so readily. Last time she had been working on Submarines. He looks forward to seeing how many Red Flags she'll raise this time.

When Atkinson, Holhouse and Nugent make their individual reports to the Captain, the agents are no wiser. None of the men had noticed anything out of the ordinary about their chief, and though Gibbs and his team ask insightful questions, the answers shed no light upon the man's behavior or any variations in it.

Whatever caused Benes to fall into such a state as to cause his confinement in Monroe Hospital, and facing transfer to Bethesda where Naval doctors can work on him, it seems to be isolated to this morning.

McGee and Palmer had better bring back answers from the Acropolis.

xxx

"Tell me about his breakfast."

"I'm sorry?" Debra Zapigna asks. McGee thought the question was reasonably simple, but perhaps something was lost in the translation?

"Who prepared it? Did you see it being prepared? Was there anything unusual? Smell, texture, color, anything?"

"Walter, the chef. No. No. And no, no, no and no."

"You noticed nothing different? At all?"

"I give Walt the order slip thorough the window, he dings when it's ready. It was just like everything else. I had over fifty meals this morning. It's a Chinese Fire Drill out there; take out, dine in, delivery - we have two delivery guys on bikes, sometimes it's all Patti and I can do to keep from crashing into each other."

"Is Walter still here?"

"Yes, he and I go off after the lunch rush." She checks her watch, a sour expression. "I'm supposed to be out there now."

"All right. One last question. How many people ordered the same meal Captain Benes did?"

This brings Zapigna's impatience up short. She pulls from her pocketed apron an order pad and pages back through it. "He had the #2." A few moments more. "Patti and I both took orders, of course, but I had thirteen this morning."

"And no idea how many Patti had?"

Zapigna shrugs. "You gotta ask her."

"All right, Miss Zapigna, you can go back to your work."

 _"Thank_ you." She leaves with the speed and manner of someone well aware of how many potential tips she's lost.

x

Michelle, after closing and locking the door, sits down in the vacated seat. "You believe her?"

He shrugs. "I don't have enough to disbelieve her. Until Abby finishes with the blood test I can't prove his food was or wasn't tampered with. We don't even know when Benes was poisoned, that minute, an hour before, the night before. All I do know is that if it was the food, the chef wouldn't have known what meal was Benes', even if he was a habitual diner, as she said he was. If it was a Tylenol incident, then we're making a lot of empty assumptions."

In 1982 seven people had been killed by Tylenol laced with potassium cyanide, which tampering led to a series of copycat poisonings in which two more people were murdered. It sparked a long panic throughout the country that, fortunately, led to extensive innovations in tamper proofing technology.

"I don't think so," Michelle declares.

"How so?"

"It doesn't _feel_ right."

"Wiccan talent?"

She places her hand low upon her abdomen. "Special Agent Gibbs would hit me so hard my baby will be born with a headache. No, I don't like the Tylenol scenario, but she didn't feel like she was lying."

"To me either."

After a few moments silence, she leans forward. "Tell me what you're thinking."

"That if it did happen here, Zapigna's our only witness, and I'm not even sure she knows she is one."

"Yet you let her go back to work."

"If she's involved, and right now I'm inclined to doubt it, Rule Number 10 still applies."

She frowns, searching for a connection with "'Never screw over your partner'?" She's not sure how this relates to their working relationship, but she suspects Jimmy's not going to appreciate it.

"My Rule 10: 'Let the suspect think he's getting away with it'."

"Ah. I get it."

"If the food was tampered with, it was done in the kitchen despite our assumptions that Walt wouldn't know who he was prepping for. There's a view from the window to the booths, and Benes is apparently a creature of habit. If Zapigna is involved, or this Walt is, I don't want them changing their behavior. I want whoever it is to think we don't suspect them – right up until we close the trap. Now, let's get that stuff back to Headquarters," he says, pointing to the jacket and case, "and see what it tells us."

"Good. I have the feeling that whatever's in that attaché case is going to blow the lid off this case."

"You really think so?"

She looks to the case, to the door, to him. "No."

xxx

When the last primary assistant summoned to report on Captain Thomas Benes enters the room she looks as though she's walked into a brick wall. She rallies quickly, no more than a second's stumble upon seeing him, but Gibbs had been looking for a reaction and is gratified by this one. He wonders what the intensity would have been if SSA Lamb had been with them. She salutes her Captain and reports "Private Patricia Court reporting as ordered, sir."

"Sit down, Private."

She doesn't move immediately. In fact, there's a moment in which she seems to be looking for a way out, as though she's been presented with a situation in which escape is preferable to cooperation, but this lasts for only a moment. She rallies and does so with body English that seems natural yet fools none of the agents. "Yes, sir."

She takes the seat before the Captain and gives him steady gaze that fools no one in the room.

"Good to see you again, Private," Gibbs says, his tone calculated to undermine her.

"Good to see you too, sir." That gets the first lie out of the way. Their previous encounter had been a poor one and Gibbs has no reason to believe this one will go better.

"Last time we met you were with the Submarine Division and we were investigating Private Harold Kurland. Interesting that we're now here on an unrelated matter and yet encounter you again."

"I can't help that, sir. Last time I was on the Necros project, now I'm assigned to a different... project. I have no idea what that has to do with you."

"What project are you with now, Private?"

An instant's glance at Captain Malone. "I'm not authorized to reveal that."

"What are your duties?"

"I am Assistant to Captain Benes, sir."

"And do you know what's happened to Captain Benes?"

"No, sir," comes with a flicker of her eyes. It's one that only someone watching closely would note. To the Agents, it's second nature to look.

"When was the last time you saw the Captain?"

"Last evening, sir."

"What time?"

"Sir?"

"What time did you see him last?"

"I think..." She glances again to Malone. "I think it might have been around 1730. Sir."

"'Think' 'Might have' 'About'?"

"Yes, sir. About that time. I think."

x

She evidently thinks he's trying to break her story and is willing to challenge him. He'll let her, because breaking her is exactly what he has in mind.

"Do you know what happened to your Captain?"

"I only know that he's not here, sir."

"Where is he?"

"I don't know, sir."

"Well, Private, when you saw him last, what was his condition?"

She thinks it over, quite visibly. "He seemed fine to me."

"Where was he when you saw him last?"

Again that look to Malone. "He was in the Project Center."

"What was he doing?"

A longer look to her boss, who finally nods. "He was testing the unit. Sir."

"What unit?"

"The–"

"Special Agent Gibbs," Malone cuts in, "if I can't Read you into the Project without authorization, the Private certainly can't discuss any aspect of it."

Though the reprimand was directed to him, Court takes it as a rebuke as well. "I'm sorry, sir," she tells her chief, "I didn't realize they weren't read in."

"You are to tell them nothing about the project."

"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir."

x

They're up another lie. She would not have been so reluctant to be specific if she'd believed he were authorized to know what the hell is going on. "You describe yourself as Captain Benes's Assistant. What are your specific duties?"

"He needed someone with a broad background in Science, sir. There are many Specialists, I'm a Generalist. He needed someone who could understand what was going on, to coordinate activities, manage reports and track progress, to make certain that the project was progressing properly, to say nothing of budgeting, personnel, communications and so forth."

He would have described her as a Secretary, if only for the fact that her duties seemed to encompass that office, but the only reason to bring that up would be to pull a response by denigrating her position. "So you are in communication with the Captain."

"Yes."

"Regularly? When not on duty, that is."

"He would contact me at any hour on any aspect of the program."

"When was the last time he did so?"

"Yesterday afternoon, just after 1400."

Interesting. "Did he seem at all disturbed, anxious?"

"No."

"You handled his correspondence?"

"Whatever came to the Lab, not his personal stuff." He says nothing, waiting for her to continue. "I didn't."

More silence. Rule Number 61 is 'Keep quiet and let the suspect talk'. People are often uncomfortable with silence, whereas to him it's preferable, but he'd long ago learned that if you want to draw someone out, make them fill the silence.

"I didn't do anything." Silence. "I don't know anything." More silence, a steady stare. "I don't know what you _want_."

"The truth, Private."

"I'm _telling_ you the truth."

"What truth?"

" _The_ truth!"

"About what happened to Captain Benes?"

"I don't know what happened to Captain Benes!"

"You are his right hand Officer. You know everything he did, everywhere he went, everyone he had dealings with."

"I don't know _Anything_!" Silence. "I don't!" Silence. "I didn't do anything!"

"Are you aware that Captain Benes is in this hospital?"

"No."

"It doesn't seem to surprise you."

"It – it does." Silence. "It does surprise me." She's starting to look surprised, or would if she could meet his eyes, but they flash to Malone, to DiNozzo, to David...

"We're done here," Gibbs announces. "Private, you'll come with us."

" _Why_?"

"Because–"

" _Am I under arrest_?"

"If you insist." The fact that she'd been with Benes at 1730 but had last heard from him at 1400 would have been enough, but this last break is more than enough to justify continuing this discussion elsewhere. He stands up and pulls her to her feet, turns her even as he pulls a set of handcuffs from his back pocket and pulls her arm back. "You're under arrest. DiNozzo, take her out and read her her Article 31 Rights."

The woman, perhaps too shocked by the sudden turn, doesn't resist as DiNozzo tugs her to the door. As it closes behind them his voice can be heard commencing the recitation.

xxx

When Gibbs, DiNozzo and David return to NCIS with the prisoner, the senior agent sends his field team to lock up the woman while he diverts to the Forensics Lab. Had they had a body to examine his tour would include Autopsy, but this will be only a short detour.

When he enters the lab he finds Abby coming out of her office, her hands rubbing her face. "Abs?"

"Gibbs! Just the man I wasn't ready to see."

"How come?"

Under her lab coat the black tee shirt she wears is dominated by a huge skull that starts near her neck and extends into her black pants, an unfortunate choice because the empty orbits are pressed outward by her breasts, something he won't consider to be accidental. Nothing Abby does with her overly individualistic fashions is accidental.

"I'm up to my pig tails in chemical analysis."

"Before we get into that, you have the stuff found on Benes?"

"Of course," she says. Heavy in her tone is the question 'where else would it be'? "McGee and Palmer dropped off his blouse a little while ago."

"Palmer?"

"The sexy one."

"I'll tell him you hold him in such high regard."

"Always have." She steps over to a large plastic 'Evidence' container. "What do you need?"

"His keys." She fishes out a small plastic bag with a treated top where the records of who had access to the contents could be logged by name and date. He signs the white section, his name under Abby's, pockets the bag. "Now, what did your pig tails find?"

She gives him a curious look but doesn't try to pursue this one. "I'm deep into pharmacokinetics. You know what that is."

"No."

"Didn't think so." But she smiles to take the sting off. "It's the phases pharmaceuticals go through: Absorption, Distribution, Metabolism and Elimination, which last is why I've asked for regular updates on the urinalysis from the hospital because by that I'll track the activity of this drug or drugs.

"The first is to determine how he was affected. Inhaled? Topically through skin, in which case it could be from before he even went to breakfast, or _was_ it ingested? Since this may or may not have happened to him in a restaurant I'm leaning to Orally rather than Nasally, because if it were airborne everyone in the place should have been affected and you'd need a massive dose of the drug."

x

She'd give him a full College course if she could, and since she'd filmed a series on Forensics for the Science Channel, he wouldn't put that past her. "What did you find out?"

"Well, if this drug was ingested had to pass the mucus membranes in the gastrointestinal tract to reach the bloodstream.

"Now normally that would be fine, thousands of different types of cells do, but this affected - seems to have targeted - his brain. That means it had to pass through he blood-brain barrier. You know what that is."

He wishes she wouldn't do this. "Anything like a road block on the bloodstream superhighway?"

She looks impressed, or derailed. "Not too much unlike that. The blood vessel networks of the brain are less permeable than those of the rest of the body. Certain sizes and types of molecules are prevented from passing through. So our perp had _two_ protections to get through, and then he attacked a particular nerve cluster very efficiently and apparently very quickly. And how he did that I do Not know, but believe me, I'm going to find out."

"What do you need?"

She covers her face again, this time for a mighty yawn, then she looks up to him. "To be sure you know I love you."

That's a surprise. "I know."

"Good. Then get out of here and let me think."

xxx

Catherine Bachman huddles against her husband George, teenaged Ben and Chloe in no better condition as they sit on the floor of the huge steel room. They'd been forced in here hours ago. The room's only features are a single 100 watt bulb in the steel ceiling, a toilet in the far right corner, a sink next to it and a cage of bars surrounding the only door, those bars forming a lock of sorts. It has a jail house door, the bars forming a cell six by six feet within the thirty by thirty foot room, and the purpose of the cell is obvious. Their captors, whoever they are, can prevent them from fighting their way free if the outer steel door is closed before the inner barred one is opened.

The first discovery they'd made when confined in this steel chamber, thirty feet to a side, was that they hadn't been relieved of cell phones, Ben's I-touch or anything else. The second, by far the most unpleasant, was that they were uniformly useless. Whatever provisions had been made in these cells, they included very effective screening. From no position can the most fleeting electronic signal penetrate these steel walls.

An hour ago three soldiers, clad in military Fatigues without identifying patches or military marks, two of them bearing an AK-47s, had entered; the unarmed man carrying a tray of food and four plastic water bottles. He'd asked no question nor answered any, had put the tray close to the cage's dispenser edge and the three had departed.

"What do they want?" is a too frequently asked question, this time from Chloe.

No one tries to answer this time.


	4. Are You Scared?

Chapter Four  
Are You Scared?

"What've you got?" is what Gibbs wants to know from McGee and Palmer when he enters the bullpen to find that DiNozzo and David have already returned, having established Private Patricia Court in Holding.

"I spoke to the docs at Monroe," DiNozzo says. "No joy. Benes moves from panic attack to hysteria and back again. Can't answer any questions – no one can get near him without him going into screaming fits. They can't even judge if he's getting better or worse. He's scared of his own shadow."

Gibbs is offended. "The man has the Navy and Marine Medal, among others." This award is presented to someone who, in a non-Combat situation, distinguishes himself at extreme risk, not a description of a man cowering in a straight jacket in a Psych Ward's padded cell. "How are they getting samples for testing?" Abby and the lab at Monroe have worked out some form of sample and report sharing; he doesn't care how it works so long as it does.

"They've got to hold him down while one of them takes the blood from his leg, but it's a really loud affair and from what they say they're getting frustrated, cause he's disturbing the other four ICU patients, setting them off, and they can even hear him in the main ward."

x

He turns to McGee and Palmer. "What about Acropolis?"

"Not much more than I told you while we were coming back," McGee tells them. The call, succinct though it was, had covered the essentials. "We interviewed several of the staff. They claim they have no idea why Captain Benes went off, but I dropped off the video tape from the Acropolis' Security camera to Abby." He doesn't mention that the woman had seemed tired. She'd been up since early Friday, had stayed her usual 16 plus hours and he doubts that she got much rest before the early morning Alert. "We also gave her his uniform jacket, everything except this," he concludes with a pat of the attaché case upon his desk.

Gibbs, forearmed by the brief report, had already stopped by the Forensics lab and pulls from his pocket a small plastic Evidence packet whose 'Chain of Custody' log he'd already signed below Abby's name. He carries the briefcase to his desk, and the agents assemble behind him as he breaks the seal on the bag and pours into his hand a key ring with over a dozen keys upon it. Selecting a small key, he inserts it into each of the locks and snaps the case open.

"Boss," McGee says, his tone equal parts reminder and warning.

"If we find any Top Secrets, I'll let the Director know." His tone says 'End of Discussion' more clearly than the words would.

"Yes, boss."

x

It is well for McGee's peace of mind that the case contains a stack of file folders, and though they're clearly labeled, each of the tabs contains a series of letters and numbers that, on first look, say nothing. The first on the stack is tagged HR4L75M43 and the others are no more informative. This first folder contains a set of diagrams that appear to be circuitry schematics, and the nearly microscopic designations of those circuits are equally obscure. He shows the papers to DiNozzo, standing next to him.

"Okay, McComputron, you're up," DiNozzo announces as he passes them over.

Tim spends a minute looking at the first sheet then, without looking up, he says "If I tell you I have no idea what this is, you won't whack me in the head, will you?"

"Not if in five minutes you do tell me."

"I'm going to need a lot more than five minutes."

Gibbs takes the folder and puts it on top of the stack, picks up the case and pushes it into McGee's hands.

He's seen diagrams for all sorts of electronic systems in his life, and all of them look like this set, but since he has no idea what it's supposed to do, or even the scale of the components, whether they're supposed to describe a pinky nail length microcircuit or a motherboard or even the circuitry of the USS Millennium, he'll cut his tech expert some slack, but the man had better have a first answer for him soon. This system, whatever it is, is probably responsible for an unknown attack upon a major security resource, but this isn't what concerns him at the moment.

What's of the greatest concern to him is why they have it, and why it's not in the hands of an unknown enemy who has obviously gone to great lengths to, at the least, take out the only person he knows who understands what it is.

"We'll keep Court on a low simmer," he tells DiNozzo, "see what happens when she stews for an hour. I'll be with the Director. You and David check Benes' place." He's already halfway out of the bullpen.

xx

Gibbs has never been one to stand upon ceremony, not even if said ceremony is obtaining permission to pass the inner door of Director Jennifer Shepherd's sanctum. His full pace passages through the outer door and across Cynthia Sumner's domain have become so standard that the women have considered putting in an electronic lock controlled from the Aide's desk, but the idea had been rejected when it was realized that Gibbs would collide at full speed with the door.

There would be two possible outcomes, either a somewhat amusing moment for Sumner or the possibility of a Gibbs shaped hole in the door.

Either way, the potential down sides had made the experiment not worth the possible benefits. Thus it's less than two minutes since leaving his bullpen that the senior Agent is saying to his chief "I need to know what Benes and company were doing at the NRL."

"Why?"

x

The question halts him for an instant, and she can read in his face - this would be glare number nine - that the answer should be self-evident so why is it not? "Because if I don't know what he was doing I have no idea who would want to hit him or why."

"You have Private Court and his briefcase."

"You should never have left Field Work."

"It's because of where we are that you are normally a step ahead of everyone else and I'm half a step ahead of you."

"Not really. Malone would have called you that we took Court, and McGee told you about the briefcase."

"Don't be too hard on him. I can be very persuasive. And as you say, I've spoken to Captain Malone and ran into the same wall you did."

"Need-to Know. Well, if I'm going to find out who did it and why, I need to know what Benes was working on."

"Unfortunately, the Commandant disagrees. Your need to know is not their Need To Know."

"Commandant?"

"Commandant."

x

This is unexpected, particularly for a Naval operation. Marine Corps Commandant May is one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the four highest ranking Military Officers who have the President's ear and in many cases answer only to the Commander-in-Chief of all the Nation's Armed Forces. He would have been less surprised to hear the block had come from Chief of Naval Operations DePardu. In fact, considering their history with the man, cooperation would have been astonishing.

"Malone said that it took three months to read the President in on whatever's going on," he tells her.

"Well, that may have been an exaggeration, but not by that much. Whatever is going on out there, I've run into the same wall as you have, and as the Bard said 'the rest is silence' - at least for us."

"Here it comes."

"Down here in the troposphere things are so quiet I feel like I've gone deaf, but in the exosphere I assure you there's a lot of noise. Whatever happened to Benes has spread through the rarefied atmosphere with the speed of a hydrogen bomb's shock wave."

"Are we going to find out what he was working on?"

"So you can have a prayer of working out who would benefit from taking him out of the picture, have some clue as to who it is, how they did it and what their game is? No."

xxx

Gibbs returns to the lab to find Abby standing motionless listening from all the corner speakers to an acoustic guitar accompanying a woman's song. She covers her mouth to contain a mighty yawn, but he's amazed she's wasting time listening to music when there's work to be done. It hasn't been twenty minutes since he'd seen her, and if she's slacking off because she thinks he wouldn't be back so soon...

No, strike that. That's not how Abby operates. Still...

"What are you doing?"

She jumps high, spins about so fast her white coat flies about like a cape and lands on her feet facing him. Even the huge skull decorating her shirt looks startled.

"Gibbs! I've got it!"

"What have you got? Turn that off."

"But it's the answer!"

"What answer?" He doesn't care how she has it, he wants it. Quietly.

"I was trying to figure out what drug they gave him, remember? Right after you left, kind of, a few minutes, this came on the radio and I knew! I downloaded it and I KNOW!"

"Know _what?_ " The music winds down to whispers almost under the guitar notes, which fade as well.

She turns to her keyboard. "Listen. This is Pauley Perrette, one of my all time favorite singers. I think she's gotta be the hinkiest singer on the planet. Listen to her lyrics." He's about answer and she clamps her hand over his mouth.

x

He's stunned as she slaps the 'Enter' key to restart the music and the guitar rhythm introduces the woman's words while on the monitor amorphous shapes move and congeal. The only things that keep him from shoving her hand away are astonishment at her audacity and the cinnamon scent of her hand cream.

/Are you scared of the dark? Are you afraid they'll break your heart? Are you afraid you'll lose yourself? Are you afraid of your own hell? Are you scared to lose? Are you afraid to choose? Are you afraid you'll win? Are you scared of your own sin?–/ he pushes her hand from his mouth and slaps the 'Esc' button.

It does nothing to halt the playback but she uses her mouse to X out the player, the screen goes black and she turns on him.

"Don't you get it, Gibbs?" She drives hard, getting faster up to her manic 78 rpm. "To be Scared of the dark, fear a broken heart, to lose yourself, to be scared of self, hell, lose, choose, win, sin, forgive, live, die, lie, be alone, the phone – don't you _get_ it Gibbs? The song is a list of fears, fears we all have to beat or they'll beat us!

"Fear, Gibbs! Fear. That's the key. That's what Thomas Benes is fighting and losing to. Fear! It's centered in the right amygdala, the primal fear center of the brain. Fight or flight, scared of the saber tooth tiger and the lion and the shark and – and everything! It's all centered in the right amygdala, a little in the left but mostly the right.

"I thought he was drugged, but he's not. Okay, he is, but he's not. It's not _any_ drug I've ever heard of. Someone has found out how to hypersensitize the Fear Center of the Brain and send it totally out of control until everything we're afraid of, everything we possibly _could_ be afraid of, blasts us totally out of control, until we're terrified of a dust bunny!"

"Dust bunny?"

"Our friends, Gibbs, our partners, our loved ones, our _mothers_! Fear, Gibbs, _mindless fear_. And it's going to destroy Benes and everyone else who this bastard poisons!"

xxx

"All right, we're on our own," is how Gibbs presents his challenge to McGee and Palmer when he returns to the bullpen. It had not been a good hour as, with Shepherd's help, he'd exhausted contact after contact without an inch of progress to show for the effort.

Tony and Ziva had better turn up something at Benes' place, because they're not going to get help elsewhere.

Now he can see even before they reply to his greeting that McGee and Palmer have made little more progress than he has traversing the rear staircases from the fourth floor to the sub-level, then back up the elevator to the bullpen.

"I spoke to Doctor Grantwood," Michelle says, "who BTW will be off tomorrow so she says we have any questions then to talk to a Doctor Walter Roberts–"

"You tell her how important this is?"

"There are four patients in that Intensive section at the moment, and Grantwood's no more or less concerned over one of them than any other, or so she says. There's no change in Benes' condition. He's still uncommunicative, won't let anyone near him. They try, he's still in a straight jacket and padded room and if someone even comes in he panics. They try to talk, he doesn't seem to understand. If they try to give him a shot to calm him down he jumps from hysterical to whatever the next level is so it's no go trying to find out what happened by asking him."

"All right. Question: Who are we up against?"

"This plot calls for major resources," Tim says. "To me that means McGillicuddy, Crocetti and Morrison."

It's been a long time since they'd heard those names. Some new plot, even a follow-up to the Millennium debacle, had been long overdue.

"Antonio Crocetti was identified as Krikor Ohanian and was apprehended in Iraq," Michelle reminds them. "Taken down is more accurate, his capture spectacular. His main function there had been in providing locations, funds and resources for terrorist training camps, and when he'd been brought in it was to Omega Base."

Omega Base has chilling connotations as a Black Op Interrogation Center known only to the highest officials. She suspects Gibbs knows all about it, she doesn't and is content she probably will never be told. As a Lawyer, there are nights when, after dream nightmares, she doesn't want to think of a real one. Omega Base is, like the Deep Web, almost legendary in that anyone who can be found who has heard of it knows nothing useful about it. All she cares to know is that it's more secure, and as secret, as Guantanamo Bay or Gitmo is famous.

"Their Modis Operandi seems to involve suborning powerful people or those in essential positions, such as Supervisory Special Agent DiMarco," she says.

"Bringing him over to the Dark Side," Tim says, "took out eight of our best Agents, and it would have been nine if Kelman hadn't been wearing her vest." As it was, one of the three bullets in her back had gotten under said vest. The liver wound had been excessively bloody, but not fatal.

"We got Herbert Morrison, aka Admiral Hing, but we never found Jackson McGillicuddy," Michelle points out. The presumed ringleader has been too evasive.

"Not ignoring that we're probably facing two new 'Dread Pirate Roberts', as Tony would say."

"I'd be surprised if they weren't replaced," Gibbs says. There should be a Rule about things never staying only disastrous for very long before someone ups the stakes. "McGillicuddy would need people in his Inner Circle."

"Kelman and her team were assigned to track McGillicuddy," McGee says.

"Get them up here.

xx

Melanie Kelman joins them in the bullpen but doesn't reach her counterpart's desk.

"What have you got on Jackson McGillicuddy?"

Kelman halts, surprised at the intensity of the question. "Hello to you too." But she doesn't expect casual conversation any more than she would an apology. "Jackson McGillicuddy, aka the bastard responsible for getting Marti killed and me in the hospital with a bullet in my back, is still unidentified."

Her bland summary is intended to say 'but you knew this already'. At 0800, the start of each Monday Shift for Alpha and end of shift for Gamma, each of the eight SSAs have a conference with Director Shepherd, which is repeated at 1600 for Beta and Alpha as a way of keeping the teams up to date, and he'd know if she and her team had made any progress on this assignment.

"What about Ohanian and Ling?"

She and her team had been assigned to keep tabs on them while they're at Omega Base. She hates to have to do this but "I'm sorry, Gibbs, I can't tell you." Information on those interrogations had been restricted within NCIS to herself, her team and the Director.

"I'll square it with the Director. Tell me."

x

For all the sandpaper of their working relationship over the past year, he has rarely invoked his Deputy Special Agent-in-Charge authority with her, but this is an Order with a capital O. If she's speaking out of turn now, it's his head that will roll on Shepherd's floor.

"Yes, sir. At last word they haven't broken." Herbert Morrison was Admiral Lee Hing and he was taken down along with several officers who had hijacked the USS Millennium, this being done concurrent with the capture of Krikor Ohanian, otherwise known as Antonio Crocetti, though the Ohanian identity is believed to be an alias as well, as Tony had pointed out the man had born no resemblance to the fictional detective Joe Mannix.

Several other high ranking military officers in Navy, Marines and Army had also fallen with Hing in the subsequent investigation. "Those two and several others have been subject to the most stringent interrogation, but they won't break."

"Why?"

x

She understands his frustration, since it's hers too since she's also on the outside looking in. "You know their manifesto, since that's about all we get out of them. 'New World Order' to a degree no Conspiracy Theorist on the web has ever had the imagination to touch. They think too small, but McGillicuddy and company don't. They seek the reorganization of governments throughout the world, but they won't deal with the Arab world; they consider them too boisterous and disorganized to be an effective force. Their clients are quiet and stealthy, working behind the scenes to the day when there will be a systematic and coordinated revolution throughout the world, yet they don't seem to be in much of a hurry. Five years is the most recent time they've put, but no one trusts this.

"They seem to have little interest in the Arab world, yet their manifesto advocates resolution of this conflict in a far more aggressive manner than NATO or any other group is willing to go. The battle against ISIS and Al Qaeda would be over in a month once they secure their own position, since anyone who supports either group would be executed on sight, back them against the nearest wall and put twenty rounds into them."

"Nice and simple."

"Simplistic, rather. They also advocate Biological warfare that'd make the Black Death seem like the common cold, dirty bombs dropping nuclear fallout to empty cities and turn them into deserts for the next ten thousand years, wholesale spiking of water supplies - what little fresh water there is or would be left. Their plan is that whatever it takes to put that part of the planet under control is what will be done.

"The Millennium was their broad sword, and if they had gotten it out of American waters and across after decimating the U.S. from Florida to New York, they would have and could have wiped out the naval forces of any country that dared stand up to them, then get within 200 miles of land and obliterate that land."

x

"You've followed what we've got so far on this fear stuff?" She nods. "Think they're behind it?"

"Taking everything we know about them, I give it a 72.428351% Probability."

"You can't be more specific?"

She doesn't respond to the dig. "Omega believes even Millennium was just one arrow in their quiver, but they can get no specifics. All that they've gotten out of Hing and Ohanion is that there's far more to come. Omega knows it's coming, but they still don't know the what, the how or the who."

 **xxxxx**

Author's Note: Pauley Perrette's music video, which for obvious reasons is only on audio on Abby's playback, can be found at (you tube dot com /) watch?v=IS4H8v9PvR8 (without the spaces) and it also appears on the official NCIS Soundtrack CD.


	5. BARF

Chapter Five  
BARF

Ducky, seated at his desk, looks back to the entrance when he hears the pneumatic doors slide open. The young, pale blonde woman who doesn't quite skip in only because he's cured her of such displays of delight, though as always she brings a wave of ecstasy with her, wears a sleeveless white blouse and a light blue skirt that he considers only the young and excessively confident can get away with. He doesn't want to know how many inches, but he thinks it could use a few more. The matching high heeled slippers she wears bring her up to five five and he does his best to ignore the impression she makes, not that he doesn't appreciate it. "Ah, Doctor Sky," he says, rising to meet her, "thank you for coming in."

He's more than usually particular in his phrasing, because he'd recently neglected the 'in' and had suffered under her unmerciful teasing.

"Hi, Ducky! I was surprised to get your message," she says as she joins him beside his desk. Following the 'Case of the Mummified Nurse' - she's recently taken after Mr. McGee with his titles - Sammy's formal connection with NCIS Pathology had again come to a close. Again. Due to budget restraints, she's called upon only when Jimmy Palmer is unavailable, and for his apprentices to work at one and the same time for even a few days is quite unusual. Now that Dr. Palmer is back from his cruise and suspension, and back to full time, she's back to no time.

That is, until the next time NCIS instigates an unusual bureaucratic situation which, knowing the US Government, will probably happen before the end of next week.

"What's up?"

"I have been giving some thought to your development and wondered what your schedule looks like in the coming weeks."

"My development?" she says with a downward glance at her blouse and a smile that hints at more than professional interest. "Why, Ducky, what do you have in mind?"

"Nothing of that sort, young lady," he says firmly. He's not about to go through _that_ again.

"Darn." But then she sobers, perhaps realizing - quite wisely - that there's fun and then there's pushing too far. Jethro smacks the backs of heads, but the young minx is not so old that...

"Well, starting the day after tomorrow I do four days 'till Thursday evening on the Mozart Festival. In fact, I just came from Rehearsal. Then after a three day Rehearsal set, I start a four day stretch next Monday on 'Carmen'. There are other sets for September, but those are mostly Fridays through Sundays so Rehearsals for those start the day after Labor Day."

"So after mid-month your time is your own."

"Basically, unless I can get a standalone gig somewhere, but they're never easy during the Summer, unless I can squeeze into Summer Stock for some triple-off Broadway play. Why? What's up?"

"Are you familiar with the Bass Anthropology Research Facility?"

Her eyes alight. "The Body Farm? _Sure_!"

He frowns at her and reminds her severely that "It is not referred to as the 'Body Farm' by those in our profession, young lady."

"Sorry, Doctor." She does try to look properly chastised, but he well knows that at best it's not easy and it never lasts. "Sure I'm familiar with it."

"How would you like to spend a week of study there at the end of the month?"

" _WHAT_?" He admits she's been practicing showing restraint in Autopsy. It completely disintegrates. "That's the Crown Jewels of Forensic Pathology! You can't _buy_ a week's training there!"

"Well, actually you can."

" _You_ can, I can't. I applied through GW - twice. Both times there was no available spot."

"Well, this is where the benefits of having connections make themselves known." He pulls out the desk drawer, withdraws several stapled papers and picks up his pen, proceeding to the labor with no more consultation. Certainly he hasn't asked if she wants to go; her reaction had been sufficient answer.

He begins filling out the form. "Much of this is straightforward. Sky, Samantha," he intones, then glances up at her. "Sorry." He knows she doesn't favor her real name, not since when she was twelve her father introduced a complication in his marriage when he'd announced that he'd favored that name in the selection for his new daughter because of a fixation on Elizabeth Montgomery.

"That's all right. I got over it a long time ago. I'm nowhere near as sensitive as mom is."

"Then I shall endeavor to avoid raising the subject to her." Since her family lives in Omaha, he considers himself to be reasonably safe. "Middle name, if any?"

"Suzanne."

He favors her with a wry smile. "Allow me to guess; Pleshette or Sommers?"

"Neither, I hope, though I always did think dad carried alliteration a little too far."

xxx

Tony and Ziva have arrived at Captain Benes' home, a two story Georgian that Ziva pronounces 'typical bachelor'.

"Needs a woman's touch?" Tony asks, looking about the living room and seeing little to complain about.

Looking at the armor breastplate and helmet above crossed battle axes on a tremendous plaque over the television, she decides that "Some things are unsalvageable."

Tony doesn't care about particulars, except in how they contribute to the picture as a whole, or else as places to hide secrets. Though engaged in Top Secret research, and though he suspects the man used every effort to separate work Benes from home Benes, not even the most cautious person can truly keep one side from carrying over into the other.

True, he's unlikely to find the answer in a rolled up scroll within the armor's breastplate - or is he? he must check - but there are many places where work Benes can be found here, provided he's imaginative.

x

There are several ways to search a home, few of which are ever depicted properly on television or in the movies. Two agents start at a point in the same room and extend outward, minutely examining everything they see, working a slow progress around the room until they meet at the other ends of the rough semicircles. When you do not know what you're looking for, everything you see is significant until proven otherwise. Rarely do they call one another's attention to a particular thing unless it has great evidentiary value.

An initial step for each location is a set of photographs taken in situ, first a broad views taken from opposite corners and then close up. Any time a new layer is uncovered that is photographed in turn. Theoretically, using these images, the house could be returned to its original condition so thoroughly that even were the occupant present and observing the search, he would be hard pressed to say Investigators had ever been there.

Searches are never brief, and spending several days on a large site isn't unknown.

The inspection of the living room, kitchen and dining room reveal no proverbial smoking gun, but it's well for the team that they make so thorough an inspection, for it is in the upstairs bedroom, set right upon the night table beside the unmade bed, that they make their first significant find.

They call it significant because neither of them has any idea what it signifies.

xxx

When Michelle Palmer enters the Forensics Lab she's not surprised to see Abby supposedly hard at work on this late Saturday afternoon. Major Mass Spec against the wall is hard at work as well, she supposes on the samples obtained from Captain Benes's tests. Getting those had been an initial debate between Gibbs and Dr. Grantwood, but the latter had granted (and she refuses any more mental puns, not about to tread into Jimmy's territory) that Abby's speed and attention to detail is far greater than the overloaded Hospital's lab, and she could send the information back to the hospital far sooner than the latter could do in reverse.

No, her surprise is for the music coming from the speakers set in every corner of the large room. While the scientist stands bent over her freestanding worktable, manipulating a careful examination of test and suspect bullets in a comparison microscope, the images of which are displayed on the large plasma screen to her right, from the speakers blast Tom Lehrer's rapid list of the more than a hundred natural Elements on the Periodic Table.

While said list is a piano accompanied manic rendition, Abby's hips, as she's bent too low, sway very slowly in her miniskirt that barely hides such charms as make her very lucky that Tony DiNozzo is neither upstairs nor is likely to return soon. Michelle watches the slow and overly suggestive sway that hits and reverses at each 'um' phrase, completely out of pace with the fast list until an obscene quick wiggle for the final rush. The rendition ends with an atrocious pun and she rocks another wiggle to the classic 'shave and a haircut' piano riff which ends in stunning silence.

"By the Goddess," Michelle says, making the bent woman jump for an instant though she doesn't rise or turn around, "you are the only one I know who can get hard nippies over a list."

Abby looks back over her shoulder with a saucy smile. "Have to keep limber." Only now does she straighten and turn.

"You get any limberer... limberer?... you'll be the next of us to get pregnant."

She smiles in challenge. "How do you know that I'm not?"

"Because you told us you used your pills every day you were on that ship."

"Could've slipped."

"Like you could get a 40 on a Science quiz." Abby shrugs, admitting to being busted, then turns back to her microscope. Michelle looks at the plasma screen and the paired images of the lands and grooves of a set of bullets. "I don't remember Captain Benes being shot."

"Very funny. This is for Baxter's shooting." Supervisory Special Agent Tom Baxter and his team had drawn a body found in Rock Creek Park and they have a suspect, but no matter how carefully Abby turns the questioned bullet: "No match. If their guy did shoot Parcellis, they're going to have to dig further for a weapon."

"Pity. Anyway, I dropped down to Resivip."

This is enough to snare Abby's attention away from science and she looks back over her shoulder. "Huh?"

"Resivip. RSVP. For 'Girls Night Out'."

Now she turns full on. "You know, some day I _will_ hurt you."

"Some have tried. I usually leave Jimmy to do the final honors there."

"Well, not really hurt, but you _are_ in line for a good spanking."

"Again, Jimmy's domain."

She laughs. "How's he going to feel about letting you out to a Club, since he can't come to chaperon you?"

"He hates it, but he's going to have to deal with it." Rule Three of Three is 'No Men Allowed' and neither of them is about to violate that sacrosanct regulation. "So, how many Resipivs do you have?"

"I'm tempted to say 'none, only RSVPs', but I'm scared to find out what word you'd use then, so I'll keep resivip as my word to be forgotten. Nine."

"Starbase 86?"

The venue and day of the week change with each weekly hostess, but when Abby schedules the event she prefers to hold it at her favorite place. "Twenty hundred. Oh, and this will be the first time there for Tina Larsen."

"She'll freak when she sees the Ferengi."

"Guaranteed."

"Well, see you later."

x

But as Abby returns her attention to the twin microscope, the Mass Spectrometer beeps.

"Hang on a minute," she says, halting the agent. "The first batch is finished. You can be my substitute Gibbs." She turns to her computer keyboard and sets up the report.

"Well, if you're going to insult me I _am_ leaving."

"Don't get your hormones in a boil."

"Why is everyone suddenly so interested in my hormones?"

"I don't know, mommy. Why would you think that?"

"Jimmy, this morning. He would _not_ let me out of bed."

Abby gives her an evil smile. "Do tell." He'd dropped off the bullet, then gone on break. She's surprised the man hadn't kidnapped his wife back into that closet off Legal, but she supposes the woman had been safe with Gibbs.

"He insisted upon bringing me breakfast in bed."

"Norwegian sausage?"

"That's how I got into this, thank you very much. But rather than let him cook, I got him to take me out for breakfast instead."

"Wise move."

"Jimmy's a good cook," she insists. "You'd be surprised. Though he nearly raped me on the way back."

"Boy's getting dangerous."

"I don't know what to make of him next. He'll drive me crazy as the quintessential neurotic father-to-be who won't let me lift a finger, then he's like when we were dating."

"Enjoy it while it lasts. Oh-two-hundred feedings start in May."

"I so know, especially since I'm going to breast feed. No tricking me into the dry-out drug."

"You tell 'em, girl."

"But he did ask me at breakfast if I knew how to make a hormone."

"Well, depending on the type, there are several methods. Were you discussing natural or synth–?"

"You thrust really, _really_ hard."

"Ohhhhhh. I hope you Gibbsed him for _that._ " Jimmy Palmer's puns are legendary, and occasionally painful.

"I hit him in a place Gibbs never does."

"He still got off lucky," but this ends with having to cover her mouth to smother a huge yawn.

"You gonna make it to 86?"

"Sure."

But Michelle's not sure. She's close enough now to see Abby's bloodshot eyes. "I don't know. You left late last night - when do you not? - but you were in this morning before I even had breakfast, and when I got dragged in I didn't even have my eyes open."

"You should switch to 'Caf-Pow!'," she points to her tall garbage pail and the seven white and red quart containers that stack beyond the lip.

"There's no more left," Michelle says, not wanting to think of how many cups she doesn't see and the staggering amount of caffeine shooting through the woman's arteries, but what protest she would raise at this self-abuse is cut off as the report graph finally appears on the monitor.

x

Abby reads the series of labeled spikes that spread themselves across the screen. " _Crap_!"

"I'm guessing that's not one of your favorite words?" Five of the spikes are marked 'Unknown'.

"Only the fact that you're a young mother is saving you. This is horrible."

"This is the blood test on Benes?"

"Yep. Gibbs convinced them I could do it faster and more accurately."

"I know."

"But this is horrible."

"So what can you do?"

"Normally when I scan for drugs I look for the metabolites, the chemicals the drugs morph into when they react to the body, but I need a lot more than I got from Benes' blood. A Lot more. The best thing I could have is a pure sample, but I'm sure they washed all his dishes and cups five minutes after he ran screaming out of the place."

"If you know the metabolites?"

She shakes her head. "I don't know the first generation of these things so identifying the second or third generations will be a nightmare. And God forbid that was a prodrug they dosed him with."

"Prodrug?"

"Something that needs the body itself to turn it into a malignant drug. If that's the case, we're talking major nightmare. I can try to isolate the unknown items from the known and try to break them down while I'm also trying to do an acetycholine test. I'll also do an enzyme multiplied immunoassay test to determine the antibody antigen reactions, looking for a hormone by using the antibodies of that hormone. That'll help me find the trigger – but it'll take _hours_."

"Maybe you should have let the hospital do it?"

"Bite your lingual member."

"Don't talk dirty." She looks at the screen again, but the report hasn't magically changed. "So Shore Leave is off for you?"

"No way. It wouldn't make much difference if I'm here or not. I'll spend the rest of the afternoon and evening trying to isolate what I can, and set things to analyze all night. Gibbs is going to want an answer as soon as he walks in, and this is the only way."

xxx

"What did you find?" is what Gibbs asks Tony and Ziva even before they enter the bullpen. They're well into Beta Shift but hes not dismissing anyone yet.

Tony holds up the file folder. "Not a lot, but it's what's not on this that's interesting."

"Okay, what's not on it?" It had better be outstanding.

"Anything that makes sense."

Tony displays to his boss a landscape table of numbers on three sheets of paper. The top row lists readings for EEG, ECG, P Rt, BP, Elec, Meta, EM and several other equally informative categories. Along the left rows headed 'Subject' is a similarly useful list of numbers from one down to sixty seven on the third page. The boxes thus formed are high numbers with long decimal extensions.

"This is all?"

"That's it. Other than personal items, this was the only thing that seemed to have anything to do with anything scientific. If this is R&D, I have no idea what they're R'ing or D'ing."

Gibbs passes it on to McGee, who looks at it for several moments, too many for Gibbs' patience. He pulls it back and returns it to DiNozzo. "Looks medical. Show it to Ducky. Maybe it'll make sense to him."

xx

Tony enters the Autopsy Suite, file folder in hand. "Hi, Ducky."

On the sliding panel before the cooling units is a man who could have done well to lose about fifty pounds and now will never have the opportunity to try. "Oh, good afternoon, Anthony."

"Who's your friend?"

"William Parcellis, late of Rock Creek Park spring."

"Drowned?"

"No. I found minimal water in his lungs, but it was the bullet that I have sent with Mr. Palmer up to Abby on his way to his break - this will be a long evening - which prevented Mr. Parcellis from expiring by drowning."

He looks about the empty room, feeling it a good icon for their progress. The Benes home had been a bust; neat, orderly and except for one oddity, utterly unrevealing. "Have something for you to look at. Ziva and I went through Benes' home, this was all we found that might relate to something R&D."

Ducky pushes the tray in, closes the door, takes the folder and spends several seconds reading the first sheet.

"Well, this is interesting."

"That's what I thought."

"Indeed," he says, studying the papers in greater detail.

x

Several seconds of silence.

Several more.

Several...

"Er, how so?"

When Ducky raises his eyes, Tony can see he'd been enjoying the moment of torment. "Well, these are integral details on the distinguishing characteristics of living persons. It is immediately apparent from the resting pulse rates that we are talking about human beings."

Knowing he's risking a long dissertation: "You're sure?"

"Oh, definitely. Every species has its own unique pulse rate, which you may be surprised to learn is inversely proportional to their size. Hamsters have resting heart rates of some 450 beats per minute while dogs' hearts beat at an average of 90 per minute. Humans maintain an average of 60 whereas elephants maintain 30 beats and the whale, one of the largest living things, average only 20 bpm."

"Good to know if I ever want to give a whale a checkup."

"I wish you luck with your stethoscope. These other figures have to do with the states of electrical activity, chemical processes, all the details that characterize living persons and how they relate to one another."

"What would that have to do with military R&D?"

He hands the folder back. "My dear boy, I have no idea."

"Distinguish one person from the next?"

"Certainly that would be one application. I should think that having these details about 'Subject One', for instance, would render a complete confirmation of identity. It would clearly make such things as impersonation considerably difficult. But beyond that, I hesitate to guess for what reason the information would be needed."

"Confirmation of Identity." He thinks about this, and the ramifications sound unpleasant, even ominous. He looks again at the tables. "How much detail do people have to go into?"

"Personal identification is always useful, and quite common. Consider the IRIS Scanner with which you are so familiar, the distinctive pattern of the retina and the tiny blood vessels that service it. But as I said, I hesitate to conclude that this is the use to which the Naval Research Lab is putting the information."

x

"Could you make use of this?"

"Given the proper equipment, I could duplicate this information for anyone; yourself, Drs. Palmer or Sky, but I am quite confident in my own ability to tell them apart."

"Yeah." He glances about the unusually vacant suite, only the three of them present that he knows of and one unlikely to go anywhere soon. "Where is she, by the way?"

"Oh, once we concluded the work on Lieutenant Saunders her extended supplemental duties came to an end. In fact, they were only extended so far because I'd lost the services of Dr. Palmer due to that Cruise of Suspension, and then the heavy workload we had to contend with after his return. Why?"

"Oh, nothing. I was just thinking that it feels a little bare not having her here."

"How so?"

In the man's eyes he can see he is thinking of it in terms of a dating interest, but that's not his intention, not since Sky had found a guy. One thing Anthony DiNozzo will never be is a poacher. "Well, she and Maura Isles were here for a couple of weeks while you and Jordan Hampton were in Scotland and the Gremlin and the Probette," he pauses for a fraction to see if Ducky will object but the man shows no reaction to the nicknames, "were on their Sabbatical, and I hear she didn't do too terribly while we were on the Princess, then the Saunders case; guess I kind of got used to tripping over her." He won't mention the incident a few weeks ago in Abby's lab, the day she'd met her then-future boyfriend, when she'd nearly run him down not once, but twice within less than a minute. On that occasion the imp, on whom he has several bets in the Mutual Self-Combustion Pool for her and Abby (payoff if they explode together) seemed about to make someone rich.

x

"In fact you will not see her for some time."

"Oh?" He glances at the bank of coolers beside him. "She didn't over-do it, did she?" He'd hate to have missed on the Pool. Then again, he hasn't seen a pile of ashes anywhere and Abby's still intact - last he'd looked.

"No. When her extra-curricular activities do not interfere," he says with a smile, referring to her Concert Violinist career, "I am sending her for a week's training at the Bass Anthropology Research Facility at the University of Tennessee."

"BARF? What'd she do to piss you off?"

"It is not a punishment, Anthony," he says with a long suffering glare. "I did extensive research there some fourteen years ago and sent Dr. Palmer in his time. It is only by such learning that one can develop a true sense of Taphonomy."

"I thought she already knew the violin."

Ducky's look is considerably more pained, no less than he'd hoped. "It is the study of the vast array of conditions that attend human decomposition, distinct changes that occur when remains are deposited in the environment in a wide array of conditions. You know," he says with deadly speculation, "I have always believed that NCIS Agents would find the experience extremely useful. I should sign you up for a week's training."

"No, thanks. But I'll give her some nose plugs before she leaves."

"I'm certain your gift will be greatly appreciated."

xxx

"Director, I have Admiral DePardu," one of the MTAC technicians reports from the Control panel to her left.

Shepherd had started her time in the room trying not to pace, and when that effort had grown too obvious she'd sat down in one of the theater chairs. She'd been told by Cynthia while still at her desk that her urgent contact with the Chief of Naval Operations had been confirmed and that he would speak to her in the secure facility immediately. She hadn't hurried, the Director is not seen rushing through Headquarters even the short distance from her office to MTAC unless there are explosions shaking the building, but she'd reached the complex first.

That had been twenty eight minutes ago.

She takes a position in the well before the huge screen and wipes the aggravation from her expression. "Thank you. Put him through."

Leonard DePardu appears on the screen, resplendent in his too pressed uniform, and she swallows the bile that rises in her throat. The last time he'd appeared on this screen it was to pull them off an investigation into a case that had cost too many lives, including NCIS Special Agent Mary Narz of Pensacola, and to condemn that hero agent to a public history as a traitor.

Her not final encounter with the man, that time face to face in this very room, was over the USS Millennium, which had also cost the lives of NCIS Agents, this time Paul Foster and very nearly Tim McGee.

She detests that she has to go to the man who, in the person of a quarter of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had proven himself to have great regard for the Navy, as is only proper, but little for NCIS and virtually none for its Agents. He'd been willing, on too many occasions, to let Agents die if the Navy could reap either benefit or at least public esteem.

"What is it, Shepherd? You have three minutes."

She stands with her hands at her sides and hopes the skirt masks her digging her nails into her own palms in an effort to mask the strain upon her temper. "Captain Thomas Benes of the Naval Research Laboratory has fallen victim to an attack. He's head of a Classified project that very likely has a bearing on why and how he was attacked, and by whom. To get answers, my agents need to be read into that project."

"No."

x

Shepherd can't believe this. In an effort to make the most use of time, believing that the man would summarily cut her off after 180 seconds, she had been succinct, but she'd hoped for far better than the even more succinct refusal.

"Admiral DePardu, I don't think you understand me. Thomas Benes, a Captain in the United States Navy, is in Monroe Hospital Psych Ward in a straight jacket. To find out _why_ , we need to be read into whatever it is he was heading."

"Director Shepherd, I don't think you understand me. The Project Captain Benes heads - headed - is Top Secret. You will not under any circumstances be Read into it. Find your answers another way. I shall expect your Report on my desk in the morning."

"Admiral DePardu, I think you do not remember that NCIS does not Report to you. That is the nature of our mandate as a Civilian organization charged with investigating wrongdoing within the Navy and the Marine Corps. Now Captain Benes is confined in a straight jacket in a hospital because he was struck with an unknown ailment that, to the best of our information, came upon him over the course of seconds. We do not know why, we do not know how, we do not know who – but with information on what he was working on, with whom and why, we may be able to find out."

"His Top Secret project has no bearing on his medical condition." DePardu reaches out and the screen goes black.

xxx

Mark Esposito settles in at the dinner table, nine year old Jose at his right, as the kitchen's swinging door to his left is pushed and Jodi enters, carrying a rectangular deep oven pan. She sets the lasagna upon the warming tray in the table's center before taking her seat at the table's head. Before anyone will reach for the hot pan Mark looks upward. "Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts which we are about to receive from thy bounty, through Christ our Lord, amen."

"Amen," Jodi and Jose repeat before she rises and uses the spatula to scoop an already cut pasta and meat rectangle onto Jose's plate, then to take one for herself.

As Mark scoops a rectangle onto his own plate the front door beyond Jodi swings open as does the kitchen door to his left. Three men clad in Army fatigue uniforms, faces swathed in black masks, huge AK-47s looking even larger for the shock, enter from the street while three others come in through the kitchen and silently take positions opposite each of them, deadly barrels pointing to their chests.

"Who are you?" Mark demands despite the deadly threat directed at him from above Jodi's head, too aware of the rifle above his own pointing at his wife.

Without a word the three who entered from the front door grab the Espositos and pull them to their feet and line them up at the long side of the table. The other three men stand on the opposite side, their long weapons aimed between their eyes.

"Dad?" the eleven year old boy appeals, wide eyed terror suffusing his pale face.

"Honey?"

"What do you–?"

The soldier before Mark takes more careful aim.

Behind Mark the black masked man brings a red ball threaded through a leather strap around and forces the sphere to his mouth. The deadly assault rifle pointed between his eyes, Mark doesn't resist, opens his mouth and the ball slips between his teeth.

 **xxxxx**

Author's Note: For the song that Abby was enjoying in her lab, which had been featured on an NCIS episode several years ago, plug into your Browser youtu **.** be / zGM-wSKFBpo without the spaces.


	6. Shore Leave

Chapter Six  
Shore Leave

'Girls' Nights Out', the locations of which change at the whim of whoever volunteers at the end of one event to host the next week's, has become a weekly tradition that spans the weekdays, having been instituted not long after the photo fake debacle and it has only three rules: No holds barred, What happens at the GNO stays at the GNO; and No Men Allowed. Ever.

Tonight Abby, Sammy, Michelle, Susan Grady from Polygraph, Intelligence Analyst Nikki Jardin and the Director's Aide Cynthia Sumner and Chaplain Siobhan McGee are old hands at the Forensic Scientist's favorite site, Ziva an occasional visitor and Tina Larsen from Document Analysis is the virgin.

If bright lights, red rope stanchions and long queues to bouncer-guarded doors are indications of a night club's success, then 'Starbase 86' is not the hottest spot in town. The only indication of this club's unique identity is a red neon sign that illuminates a plain brown door with a foot high gold oval and silver arrowhead 'Next Generation' emblem painted on it. The entrance is below the street so only the top third of the door is flush with the sidewalk.

Once they step down and inside, however, it's clear that the understated motif stops at the street. In fact, it's enough of a change to leave Tina standing upon the second of three inner steps, gaping at the spectacle within. A white bar runs the length of the right wall, the surface lit from within, but it's an instantly recognizable bar, even to the diamond shaped niches in the back wall stocked with horizontal bottles of every conceivable, and a few inconceivable, styles. A collection of small white topped circular tables, seemingly copied from 'Ten-Forward' and barely large enough for two, dot a black floor like stars in the heavens.

Abby, on the black floor dotted with the illusion of distant stars, turns to look up at her friend, pleased by the trap so well sprung. "It's a mix of 'Galaxina's Pub' meets the 'Mos Eisley Cantina' meets 'Quark's from DS9' with a touch of 'K-7' and 'Ten-Forward' thrown in."

"You don't say," Tina breathes as she steps down onto the space black floor. From speakers suspended high in the corners of the starlit heavens, in a stroke of cosmic irony, the Star Wars 'Cantina Band theme' begins to play.

While the patrons are an odd and eclectic mix, many indulging in costumes appropriate to the setting, the staff is more stunning. A Classic-Trek blue miniskirt uniformed Lieutenant and a bouffant haired, lingerie clad FemBot from Austin Powers wait tables nearby. A fetching Red Sonja wearing silver metallic triangles intended to resemble mail assists a customer at a more distant table while a hyper-evolved Chimpanzee takes orders on a Starfleet tricorder in the far corner. Quark, or a reasonable facsimile, tends bar beside a tall, ceremonially robed Vulcan.

x

Abby, who'd stocked up on two 'Caf-Pow!'s before leaving the lab (she'll sleep tonight) leads her group to a line of 4 reserved tables for two slightly further than halfway across the room, commencing beyond a vacant space in the star field from the bar and the nine women take seats with Abby at the head of the left side. She's often said she likes a good view of Epsilon Hydra VII for no revealed reason and Tina sits at her right with Nikki and Susan along that line of lighted tables. Sammy sits at the head of the right line facing a gorgeous lenticular rendition of Andromeda with Siobhan to her left, then Michelle and Cynthia with Ziva at the end between Susan and Cynthia.

The blue mini-uniformed Starfleet Lieutenant approaches with her tricorder as they settle in and takes a place at the head of the line between Abby and Sammy. "Evening Dax, Abby, T'Racy, Nona, Pilot, Aeryn, Miranda, Gaila" she greets them around the tables as they get settled. The waitress had read the afternoon reservation, which is also why the four reserved tables had been lined for them, their tops lighting everyone from below. She hadn't used any pseudonym when she'd finished the circle at Tina, not having named her at all.

"Hi, Helen," Abby looks to Tina beside her, "that's as in 'Helen Noel'." Her black hair is in a ringlet style more common to the mid-previous century's approximation of the future of women's hair.

"I can see that," Tina says, though slightly confused, for though the hostess had greeted Abby she'd been looking at Sammy, yet she'd greeted Abby as Dax. This place is like entering either a real life Cosplay contest or, more likely, an alternate universe where everything is instantly familiar and universally not. As a life-long Trekker, she can see the obvious choice in the woman's case; she strongly resembles the actress from the Classic episode 'Dagger of the Mind' in the appropriate blue Sciences uniform.

"Everyone here gets tagged with a nickname," Abby explains. "It's added to your profile so pretty soon they know what you want and how you take it. Sammy is Abby, aka Hannah Spearritt from BBC's 'Primeval'."

"That's obvious," Tina says, not for an instant about to let on that she'd been caught flatfooted. By Sammy's hairstyle she'd recognized and mentally tagged the doctor as such a year ago May and isn't surprised that here others would make the connection. Sammy resembles, to her, a cross between Spearritt and a short haired Mairead Nesbitt from 'Celtic Woman', the violin profession helping to cement that connection. "So two Abbys."

"Not in here," the real Abby says. "I'm Dax."

"Where are your spots?"

"Where you'll never see them," she assures her with a smile.

"Her tats," Helen explains. "It was a reach, but since she's a Scientist like Jadzia I got away with it."

x

"I'm Nona," Michelle says at Siobhan's other side from the blonde imp.

Perhaps it's the lack of an orange furry bikini top and sprayed on leather pants worn by Nancy Kovack in Trek's 'A Private Little War' but "I can't see it."

"I'm a witch, though not a Kahn-ut-tu."

"She can be wild enough, though," the real Abby assures her. Michelle responds with a simulated bite.

"Oh."

"And Siobhan," she says with a head tilt right, "is T'Racy, but only Tim knows how racy."

"And it's going to stay that way," she assures them.

"She calls me Aeryn Sun," Ziva says from the end of the table, "though I do not see the connection."

"No, that one I actually get," Tina declares. "Officer."

"By the same token I'm Pilot," Cynthia to Ziva's right says, "because to do my job you need multiple arms and no matter how obvious I am out front sometimes I still feel tucked away."

"I'm Gaila," Nikki says but doesn't offer an explanation for the choice.

"And I'm Miranda, as in Jones," Susan says from Ziva or Aeryn's left, "though in this case a walking lie detector."

"Now, what do we choose for you?" Helen considers.

"Can I be Jeannie? That is, if it's not taken?" She's often fancied herself to resemble Barbara Eden's mystical character, though she admits she resembles the animated version from the Saturday morning cartoon more so than the real life.

"Wouldn't matter if it were," Helen assures her. Through the speakers comes the classic Overture to the original 'Battlestar Galactica' series. "Now, what can I get you?"

"Nine Pan Galactic Garble Blasters," Abby declares expansively, but Sammy raises her hands.

x

"Oh No You Don't! The one time you maneuvered me into one of those, the Ferengi had to haul me into a cab and you didn't even help."

"Serves you right for being so small. Sorry, I mean _petite,_ " she says, not sounding sorry at all.

"I'll have Asteroid Water," Sammy declares.

"Mineral water," Michelle translates sotto vocé for Tina before looking up to the blue uniformed Lieutenant. "Me too."

"Come on, Lion," Abby appeals. "Live a little."

"Do you _want_ Jimmy's head to explode? Last time it took two hours to piece it back together, and I'm still not sure I got all of them."

"He's not that bad," Sammy declares, looking to the priest between them for support.

"I come home with alcohol on my breath, he'll go through the ceiling."

"She's pregnant." Abby brings Helen Noel up to date.

"Oh. Then you shouldn't."

"But what's so bad about a Gargle Blaster?" Tina asks, concerned at the certainty in the waitress' tone.

"You ever read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?" Michelle asks, her voice heavy with warning. "It's described as 'having your brains smashed in by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick'."

"Here they don't kid around," Sammy says.

"Three hundred ninety one proof," Abby proclaims.

"Oh." Tina decides to take the stunning though obvious exaggeration for a warning and defers to her friends' advice. Pregnancy is a much more pleasant subject. "How far along are you?" She can't tell, sitting down, if the petite woman is showing, but she hadn't noticed earlier.

"Thirteen days."

"Huh?" The baby's a couple score cells. "Ohhhh, he has 'New Daddyitus'."

"A terminal case. Terminal for me, that is. He got me a bottle of Diclegis and insists I carry a dose with me wherever I go."

Nikki looks at her curiously, and she knows why. Not even two weeks and "You're having morning sickness already?"

"No, I don't. But Jimmy drove Dr. Bricker, the CMO aboard the Pacific Princess, to distraction the day after he found out I was until the man finally gave him some so he'd leave him alone. He comes home from work and waits on me hand and foot. If I weren't here, I'd have to hide at the Temple or he'd have me confined to my chair while he does everything for me."

"What's he going to do when you're six months along?" Cynthia asks.

"Oh, he'll be dead."

"If he doesn't die from exhaustion," Abby elaborates, "she's gonna kill him."

x

'X-Files' comes down from the elevated speakers in each corner of the starfield painted walls. "Speaking of which," Sammy says, glancing up at Helen standing very patiently between them, tricorder in hand, but addressing Tina, "if you have a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster it'll kill _you."_

Michelle grins. "When Siobhan was here last," she says with a glance at the priest at her right, "I'm told they had to call an ambulance for her, Abby and Helen. That was while Jimmy and I were on our Honeymoon."

"Never again," Noel declares.

"Amen," Siobhan declares, wincing at the memory.

"But that wasn't the drinks," Abby counters, "that was that maniac vampire who bit you and beat us up."

Tina's face falls. " _Whaaat_?"

"Don't worry," Siobhan assures her. "He was a madman they were hunting. He only thought he was a vampire."

"Mad strong enough, though," Abby declares.

"Gibbs and the others captured him," Susan assures her. "And Ducky staked him while he was trying to bite Sammy."

Tina looks among her eight friends. Fantasy is one thing, indulging overboard is another but "What have you gotten me into?"

"Order a Tranya," Nikki suggests. "It's lightly fermented fruit juice."

She's sure the Agent won't suggest anything dangerous. "One Tranya please? I'll start out there and work my way up."

"To a Gargle Blaster?" Abby challenges.

"What _is_ a Garble Blaster?"

Sammy tells her "It's a split drink but the density of the one is higher than the other, so one stands on the other so if you're careful you can sip each in turn. The top half is Absinthe, 179 Proof, which if you're not ready for it will knock you right on your butt, but the bottom half is the kicker, that'll knock you _off_ your butt. Spartacus is a whopping 212 Proof. That's why it's 391," she finishes with a wry smile, enjoying those rare times when Abby intentionally gets the science wrong.

"No _way._ "

"Wise choice," Helen says over the 'Galaxy Quest' theme. Of those who have ever dared order it, only Dax orders the warp fuel with any regularity. "And the rest?" Though the conversation is interesting, as it usually gets when Dax holds court, she's glad to get back to the ordering.

"I'll have a Raktajino," Siobhan decides.

"Irish Raktajino?" Abby teases.

"Not a chance," she declares. Irish coffee is spiked with whiskey but she thinks coffee, even the Klingon variety, is considerably better than returning home to save Timmy from their niece with alcohol on her own breath.

Susan chooses a Romulan Ale, Nikki some Antarian Glow Water, Cynthia 'one of your green Aldebaran whiskeys' while Ziva requests a Saurian brandy.

x

"So, how's your niece?" Abby asks Siobhan when Helen leaves.

"She's a wonderful girl, and I'm having the time of my life. After I showed her around NICS - sorry I didn't get down to your lab but I heard you were busy."

"Very. Next time."

"I took her on a tour of the Mall and she was all wide eyed agog over every bit of it, but she's six and her last vaccination was with a phonograph needle."

"Ohhhh."

"I let my guard down for just a moment and suddenly found myself with a 'Why incision'."

"Ow," Susan says. "How long did it take before you stopped her with ' _Because_!'?"

"No, I was a good girl, I'm happy to say; but it had to have topped sixty before I found something to distract her." She smiles at the memory. "For about ten minutes."

"This is the warm-up," Abby predicts.

"I'll bet you were a nightmare," Siobhan quips.

"No, my stepparents had me beat. They were deaf."

"Oh, yes."

"So I had to Sign everything, so my hands and arms would give out long before I ran out of questions."

"Perhaps I'll bring Bridget down and you can teach her Sign."

"Love to."

"So Tim's taking this shift," Cynthia says.

"Yep."

"As a Writer, he'll probably have a load of stories to tell her."

Siobhan's face reflects her realization and she starts to get up. "I'd better get back there!" But then she relents when seeing her friends' distress. "Kidding. Though it will be good training for him, for when the day finally comes."

Susan asks "Are we going to have another mommy in the group?"

"Not soon," she assures them. "I'm very diligent."

"I notice you don't mention Tim being careful."

"He is," she says but then admits to the tabletop "Once in a while." There's no way to avoid the knowing giggles. "I may be able to get away with it when I'm wearing a chasuble, or even a dalmatic, but I'm in no hurry," she declares. "We're still on our honeymoon."

"That's what Shelly said," Sammy quips.

"Please, _don_ ' _t_ call me Shelly," Michelle pleads. Those three books, including the new one that caused such a stir at the end of the Saunders case on Monday just as the New Orleans contingent were leaving, have become the bane of her life. "Being known as Shelly Jalmer by some people is as bad for me as Pimmy Jalmer is for my poor husband."

x

"Speaking of the priapic McGee," Nikki says, "Sammy, were you serious about suing him?" The stunning declaration had quickly made the rounds.

"Darn tootin'," Sky declares, "if he prints that book as is. I'm sorry, Siobhan, but I can't let him say those things about me."

"No, don't worry about it. He spoke to Lyndi Crawshaw, they're going to give him a fortnight to do a rewrite."

"A total rewrite in two weeks?" Ziva asks, knowing how long he'd worked on the original - which she hasn't seen but which has achieved a fame of its own. "With Gibbs breathing down his neck?"

"He can do it. The mystery is a good one; that can stay. There weren't that many objectionable scenes."

"True," Sammy admits. "Once he gets rid of 'Sabrina Shore' and everything that can identify me, and cuts out the sex, I'll have no objection."

"Cut out the sex," Tina declares, "there'll be no book."

x

Helen returns with a large tray upon which she balances nine glasses, one of which had already been prepared, as Vina's sexy dance from Trek's 'The Menagerie' flows from the speakers at the top of each corner. She sets before each women space black napkins printed with the white Starfleet Command emblem, a field of stars enclosed in a circle of laurel leaves and then an assortment of decorative glasses. The tranya for Tina is a glass goblet filled with an orange-pink mixture while Abby receives a six inch tall, one inch diameter glass that reminds the women of one of her lab beakers, the bottom half of the mixture amber, the upper green. Siobhan recalls on her first visit having fallen for ordering a PGGB and choking on a sip of the green, then learning that the amber half is the strong part.

Susan's Romulan Ale is light blue, Cynthia's Aldebaran whiskey is light green, the other women's concoctions are a greater variety of colors.

"So," Nikki asks from opposite Michelle when the waitress goes to assist an arriving couple, "how's your Campaign going?"

"I think I've found the one thing he can't say 'no' to."

At Cynthia's look, Abby elaborates. "Ever since that guy blew up in their bedroom she's been trying to get Jimmy to move."

"Where are you now?"

"Orchard Lane off 30th, block north of P. It doesn't even reach as far as 31st."

"That's a nice neighborhood," Susan says. "Quiet?"

"Silent."

"My apartment house has three babies and two pregnant baby-making machines. If you don't want it, I'll take it."

"Deal. We'll switch as soon as we find a place."

"I love it when a plan comes together."

"He wouldn't even talk about it because it's the first apartment he had since moving out of his mother's house and he's attached to it. But it's three and a half rooms, fine for the two of us but no way are we going to raise a child in it. We can and we will afford a house. So I told him we have to look for one and he has to have us out and in before I'm too big to help with the move."

"As if he would let you pick up a box," Susan quips.

"As if."

x

"So, gals, what's new?" Cynthia asks over the 'Theme from The Fifth Element'. For someone in the supposed center of NCIS insider information, she hears the least of the gossip.

"I'm going to BARF," Sammy announces.

Nikki, two tables down on the other side, glares at her. "You do, you clean it up."

Overcome by giggles, Sammy struggles to answer until Abby comes to her rescue.

"The Bass Anthropology Research Facility. It's part of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville."

"The Body Farm?"

This is enough to make Sammy, recalling Ducky's terse reprimand, fight for sobriety. "It's not a Body Farm. It's an outdoor facility where corpses are studied as they decompose. They bury them, dismember them, leave them laying on the ground, put them in trunks, wrap them in tarps or plastic or whatever, put them in shallow graves, in boxes or bags, refrigerators or cars, immerse them in a pond, do anything you can imagine and they study the progress of decomposition in rain, dry, summer, winter, whatever, over weeks or months or even years.

"In the earlier days they had put bodies in climate control caskets with electronic sniffers, like they use for testing perfumes, because they wanted to compare the concentration of cadaverine and putrescene to see how it related to time of death. That one didn't work out as well as they hoped, but they put the bodies in a lot of natural and unnatural situations, photograph and test them. They even use video and infrared to watch the decomposition and how the bodies may be scavenged by smaller animals that can get through the razor wire and electric fences."

"Who else is happy this place does not serve dinner?" Ziva quips.

"To get a week there to study with them is a wonderful opportunity. Ducky could have knocked me out with a boa when he told me I was going."

"That would've been something to see," Nikki says, not particular about what type it would have been.

"Whatever gets you there," Susan says, keeping it as clean as she can for the mixed company surrounding them.

"So, who's for games?" Nikki asks.

"What kind of games?" Ziva asks. "And bear in mind that if you say 'Charades', I shall have to kill you."

"Truth or Dare."

"You must be joking."

"I'm serious."

Cynthia shrugs. "I'm in."

"You sure you can handle the truth?" Susan teases.

"She needs to worry about the dares," Abby predicts. "I'm in. How about you, Siobhan?"

"Always tell the truth," she assures them, setting down her cup on the saucer.

"Then you'd better be scared of the dares," Sammy predicts.

"Will this be a clean version?" she tests.

"Who're you kidding?" Abby exclaims. "No holds barred, remember?" That's Rule One.

"Then I'm in." A chorus of ' _whoa_ ' greets this pronouncement.

"Prepare to duck," Susan warns. "I'm in." It takes no more to sway the vote.

x

"So," Sammy says, "who'll go first?"

"You will," the women chorus.

"Okay, I can take a hint." She looks around her prospects. "Nikki, truth or dare?"

"I don't trust you. Truth."

"Okay. Have you ever been so worked up over a guy that you didn't care about germs?"

"No."

"Total bummer, dudette."

"My turn," Nikki counters. "Ziva, if you could be trapped in the elevator for a weekend with anyone, who would it be?"

"Already happened. But my choice? No contest. Ducky."

"Why?"

"Not fair. Two questions."

"I challenge."

"You can't challenge that." Abby, who finds herself the unofficial moderator, declares. "One question's a rule. Plus, you forgot to have her choose 'truth or dare'."

"Darn."

"Abby," Ziva says, "Truth or Dare?"

"Always truth."

"We will see. What is the most outrageous outfit you have ever worn in your Lab?"

"My electric green bikini."

"Oh, you are _so_ challenged!" Cynthia declares, the other women jumping in as well.

"Seriously. It was last summer, when the AC blew and the temperature was a hundred in the lab. Remember? It was around the time we met Siobhan."

"And?"

"Well, I had to keep my lab coat on, even though I only closed it when someone came in. That was the day before Gibbs caught me in a leather bustier because I'd been caught at a Cemetery party."

"With that lab under 24/7 Security Monitor you were down there in a bikini?"

"Had no choice."

x

"Okay," Abby looks over her potential victims. "Susan, Truth or Dare?"

"Truth."

"Have you ever used a polygraph to find out if someone's a good prospective date?"

"That would be unethical."

"That's not an answer."

"Yes it is. It's mine." Susan declares. "My turn," she declares. She played that one pretty fast, but knowing the answer Abby decides she'll let her get away with it. Once.

Tim and Siobhan hadn't been dating back then.

Susan looks to "Siobhan, Truth or Dare?"

"Truth."

"Easy," Abby exalts. "She can't lie worth spit."

"I can so."

"And pitted against Lie Detector Gal, this should be so interesting."

"Please," Susan counters. "Siobhan, you're not a nun, but we all know that the 'Naughty Nun' is a Classic Male Fantasy. Has Tim ever asked you to–?"

" _He knows better_!"

x

x

x

"Ohhh – _kay_ ," Abby says. "We'll score that a 'No' with no Challenge. Siobhan, your turn." She feels like she should duck, but the priest doesn't seem out of the evening's mood.

"Cynthia. Truth or dare."

"Truth."

"Do you sometimes leave the intercom open when Jethro and Jennifer are together?"

"No."

"Challenge!" Susan declares. "How many think she's fibbing?" Every hand goes up - including Cynthia's at last.

"All right," Michelle says, "Cynthia takes a forfeit. The wages of Cyn." Everyone groans at that one. "Tina, Truth or Dare?"

"Truth."

"No one trusts dare. Okay. What is the wildest sex thing you ever did?"

Tina looks reluctant to answer this and Sammy jumps in. "With another woman!"

"Hey!" Michelle bites, but then she reconsiders. "Okay, with another woman."

Tina blushes, which for a blonde of her complexion is not a good thing, and seeing Sammy's sparked interest makes it even worse. "I'm not sure if this is a sex thing, but here goes. It was in College, in the Girls' dorm. My roomie Meghan and I had a couple bottles of Tequila with us." She stops there.

"What happened?" Nikki presses.

"I don't remember _anything._ But the next afternoon we woke up in blankets in a Police Station over in the next county - and to this day neither of us knows what happened or where our clothes wound up."

"Bummer when you can't remember the best night of your life," Sammy commiserates.

"Abby," Tina selects, "Truth or Dare?"

"Truth."

"On a case, have you ever _lied_ to Gibbs?"

"Yes." They milk the shock for all they can, especially since none of them can follow up on it as the next turn is Abby's.

"Sammy, Truth or Dare?"

Sammy gives the woman opposite her a sly look. "Dare."

"Coward." Then again, there's no one better able to dig up the embarrassing dirt like a room mate, and she'll have more opportunities. She glances to the open space before the bar. "Okay, next song that comes up, get up and sing."

Sky does an excellent impression of terminal horror. " _No fair_. You know I can't carry a tune if you strapped it on my back! Truth."

"No take-backs. Dare's what you chose, dare's what you have."

The 'Lonely Man' theme to 'The Incredible Hulk' is ending and she has no way out. "Someone's going to pull the fire alarm," she warns sotto vocé.

"This is going to add new depth to the old 'Gong Show'," Abby assures the others.

x

The next song that commences a moment later does so with a rapid riff that launches into 'Time Warp' from the 'Rocky Horror Picture Show', which throbs down from the speakers in the four corners. When Sammy, with a grin of relief, as the originator of the song couldn't sing any better than she can, steps into the vacant area beside her used for occasional dancing before the bar, takes the floor, already dueting with Riff Raff in his introduction, it inspires several patrons to leave their tables for the audience participation dance instruction and take the chorus. When they see this, the eight women decide they don't want to be excluded from the fun.

A woman from the left side comes in to take Magenta's part while Sammy retains Riff Raff's and while most of the patrons take the chorus, about midway through another young woman assumes Lil Nell's part, following with very enthusiastic and almost rhythmic tap dance without taps. The bar became the audience since the Ferengi and Vulcan owner/bartenders and the staff cannot leave their posts and all take advantage of the raucous rendition which winds down to its chaotic ending four minutes later without anyone falling to the starry floor.

When the women return to their tables Sammy snatches up Abby's six inch tall, inch wide, still two thirds full glass. Only half the green portion is gone and the three inches of amber remains complete.

"Put it down, kid," Abby says, the others not quite seated. "That's a PGGB, remember."

"No," she giggles, adopting a silly-child voice. "I did my dare, I claim my prize." She downs the two layer concoction in one fast gulp.

The room, at least their portion of it, comes to a dead stop. Abby stands gaping at her. The petite woman staggers but keeps her feet under her.

"I don't know whether," Abby says to her probably suicidal friend, "to applaud or duck from the shrapnel your skull is about to become."

" _Whooooooo_ ," Sammy fans her mouth, plunking down into her chair, "maybe you were right."

"Of course I was right." She looks to the other women. "No more for this one, and we're gonna have to carry her to the Forenschick."

x

As the conversation renews, though the contest is abandoned, the friends note that while they're hardly able to determine if the imp is any happier than she is normally, she's quite unfocused and awkward in her movements. In fact, she's declining by the minute. Abby, having quite a rapid metabolism, had nursed the first third of the drink and Sammy had taken the remaining two in a gulp. Her head becoming shrapnel is perhaps not too far from her fate, at least in the morning, but for now she sits half poured into her chair, overly relaxed and with a definitely lopsided smile.

"Hey, Sammy," Abby tries after a few minutes, wondering how many of the women it will take to get her friend to the car, "you okay?"

She giggles, and even that is slightly tilted. "Suuure..." she says, her voice sing-song as she wavers in her chair. "As Bill found out the other night... when I grabbed his ears... I can hold my licker."

Several women wince, the others look on in hope of more detail. It occurs to them that, in Sammy's condition, they could easily gang up on her and pull out all sorts of salacious secrets.

"Is it my turn?" Her voice remains a falsetto sing-song, quite out of tune.

"Huh?"

"Truth or Dare?"

"Hon, we finished that with 'Time Warp'," Nikki says.

"Oh." She scans the faces before her, smile even more lopsided. "Did I win?"

"Kid," Tina declares, "you set a record." The game had been 'no holds barred', but some things...

x

"Honey?" Jimmy Palmer, all unobserved, approaches the group and stops at the head of the line behind Sammy. Michelle is two tables down beyond Siobhan.

"What are you doing here?" she asks, half a demand. Rule Three isn't to be broken by anyone. She knows he can't go long without worrying about her but...

"I thought I'd – that is, I know you had plans, and I wouldn't intrude but..." He winds down, lost for words in the knowledge that he's breaking her promise.

Sammy looks up, turns back over her shoulder, looks up higher, focuses with difficulty on the towering man partially behind her. " _Hiii_ , Jim-Päl!" she exclaims, her voice warbling as she rises unsteadily to her feet and falls. His automatic grab about her body is the only thing that keeps her upright, or as upright as she can be with chest pressed to his stomach. She reaches up and actually climbs him until she gets her feet under her and her arms about his neck.

"Gi us a kiss!" She pulls the man down hard into a powerful kiss that stops the group. She presses her tongue past his lips, something his expression gives away to the women.

When she hooks her left leg behind his knees to pull him close and shifts her crotch upward against him, Michelle's initial astonishment that had held her frozen bursts and she jumps to her feet. Siobhan is immediately up as well but in the woman's way even as Abby grabs Sammy's shoulder and yanks her about hard, the spin making the girl fall into her arms. Abby, caught unprepared for her roommate's sudden collapse, eases her back into her chair.

Jimmy, left staring at their friend, then to his enraged wife as she finally manages to step around the Chaplain, says "A simple handshake would've done."

x

"Well, that's some way to end a night," Susan quips.

"Can someone give me a hand?" Abby appeals. "Before we're asked to leave?"

"Don't worry about it," Helen Noel says in assuring tones as she joins the group, a cup steaming in her hand. They can smell the coffee but Abby waves it off.

"She's a tea drinker – and up to now practically a tea totaler. We'll just get her into my car and a couple of us can get her home and up the stairs?" she appeals to the group. Two flights with a dead drunk woman is too much for her alone.

"Sure," Jimmy says, stepping in to get his hands under Sammy's arms but at the touch she jumps up on her seat with a shriek, instantly awake as she pulls forward. She looks up at the line of women beside her and slams back into the chair with a screech, eyes painfully wide, terror etched into her face.

"KEEP _AWAY_!" she screams, feels Jimmy behind her, looks back and screams, falls to her right onto the floor. She leaps to her feet as Abby, frightened as well but for an entirely different reason, tries to reach for her arm.

Sammy shrieks, backing away. "LEAVE ME ALONE!"

"Sammy!" Abby tries, but her voice is enough to make the woman virtually leap from her skin.

She backs away from the astounded women. "DON'T HURT ME! DON'T _TOUCH_ ME! LEAVE ME _ALONE_!" She collides with an occupied table, turns and starts to pull back from the couple but realizes she's backing to the nine. She whirls back, screaming "DON'T HURT ME! LEAVE ME _ALONE_!"

"Honey," Abby tries, " _no one's_ trying to hurt you."

"Now _that's_ a bad trip," someone at a table near the corner says and Abby whirls on him.

"She doesn't _trip_!"

x

Sammy cowers away from the anger. The Chimpanzee with the Tricorder is five feet to her right and she shrieks, turns left and tries to escape but slips and falls on the dance floor, turns over, face buried in her hands but her shriek crowds the room. " _LEAVE ME ALONE_!"

"What's happening here?" an authoritative voice demands and the Ferengi-disguised manager pushes through the standing mob, but he can't get close as Abby kneels beside her panicked friend, trying to use soft voice rather than touch to get through.

Sammy looks back and up, sees Abby and the Ferengi and her screech momentarily deafens everyone.

.

.

.

Author's Note: The 'Time Warp' that was done here can be found at www. bing search?q=time+warp+rocky+horror+picture+show&pc=EUPP_ without the spaces that imposes


	7. Frightened to Death

Chapter Seven  
Frightened to Death

Doctor Samantha Sky MD, laying on the black star-scaped floor of Starbase 86, screams as she tries to crawl for the exit but a hand clamps upon her ankle. She falls, rolls over, kicks wildly and breaks Abby's grip. She tries to get to her feet but her high heels slip and she falls again to the floor, her scream deafening her friends. Abby is on her again, kneels beside her, grabs her wrists and pins them to the floor. The petite woman shrieks and struggles wildly under her roommate's pinning grip, her legs thrashing in an effort to get free. But writhe as she does, she can't escape when Tina Larsen, Susan Grady and Cynthia Sumner grab her left arm and each leg.

Her shrieks fill the bar, but despite her struggles she can't break free. The three women holding Sammy on the black floor allow Abby to focus her efforts on her panicked friend's right arm. Sammy's screams rise in pitch, her struggles become wilder, and on her red face is etched the most horrendous terror but she's helpless under her friends.

Michelle Palmer leaves Jimmy, Nikki Jardin, Ziva David and Siobhan McGee clustered around Sammy, who tries to kick her friends despite Susan and Cynthia's efforts to hold her in place. The standing women are unable to get closer to help. Sammy's shrieks grow wilder, more shrill as she's unable to escape despite her wild thrashing.

Michelle hurries around the women to Sammy's head and shoves the useless, curious patrons of the bar aside so she can kneel above her and grasp her head tightly, immobilizing her. Sammy's hysterical shrieks rise to greater pitch. She almost wins against the four women who, despite having leverage, can't keep her arms or legs down against the smaller woman's terror enhanced strength. Both hands pressed firmly on either side of her scarlet face, Michelle restrains her friend's head, tries to shut out the piercing shrieks, the blasts of mindless panic that rip from her.

Fifteen seconds of this near deafening struggle and Sammy stops screaming, her wild struggles ease and slow, her body relaxes under the pinning women and she collapses, head cradled in Michelle's hands.

In the silence punctuated by ignored music from all sides, Sammy lies unconscious on the black floor.

x

"What happened?" one of the patrons surrounding them asks, his voice loud in the quiet as the music is switched off. Michelle releases Sammy's head and the four women relax their grips. Already her red face pales toward its normal complexion.

"She fainted," Michelle says.

"What?" a different woman asks from above them, her voice flooded with disbelief.

Michelle locks eyes with Abby. "She." She drives it home firmly. "Fainted."

"Yes," Abby concurs, looking up to the crowd. "Right. She fainted. Anyone have some water?"

Michelle nearly falls, her body tingling, feeling as though she'd pushed two fingers into an electric socket and held on for an hour. Her breath roars in her ears, her head feels like it's about to launch off her shoulders and her entire body vibrates, thrums with energy, power more intense than she's ever experienced. She feels like every cell in her body is not just glowing, it's blasting like a Roman Candle. She trembles, unable to endure it, unable to hold it in for another second.

She's grateful when Jimmy lifts her to her feet, but she pulls away hard. "Don't touch me," she whispers, to her ears an echo of Sammy's pleas but hers is vastly different. Jimmy can't touch her in her condition. She's barely holding on, and if her concentration breaks she feels she'll explode.

She staggers against Abby standing above Sammy's right shoulder, falls into the woman's arms.

"What's wrong with you?" Abby whispers into her ear.

"Can't hold it!" she whispers back. "Get ready for five gallons of 'Caf-Pow!'."

x

The warning is barely in time. Abby feels every nerve in her body come alight, filled with power, the most intense 'Caf-Pow!' rush she's ever felt. It blasts into her, through her, makes every cell flare in blinding light no one can see for it's only in her mind. She feels like she's coming to life, that the life she'd known for so many decades is but a shadow of this life that blasts through her body.

If she hadn't been warned, the overload of physical and psychic energy would probably have knocked her off her feet. She clings to the witch, believing that if she didn't there'd be three women collapsed on the floor instead of one and answers would have been impossible.

The charge blasts through her but it passes too quickly, as they achieve equilibrium, for anyone, with their focus on the unconscious woman on the floor beside them, to become aware of what's happening.

"I'm sorry," Michelle whispers, disengaging from the hug. "No one else could have been prepared in time and in shorthand for what it was to be like, and I had to get rid of half of it fast."

"Don't apologize," she says as quietly, every nerve in her body vibrating, bursting with such life that she doesn't even try to give it a word. "I may swear off 'Caf-Pow!' if only you could come down every day and give me a charge like this."

"I'll hang myself first," Michelle swears, but now they can turn their attention to the others. They're both still physically and psychically energized, but neither is overwhelmed.

'Pity she can't bottle this,' Abby thinks. Then the full horror of what happened to Sammy hits her. She knows, with nauseous fear that floods her body, what's happened.

But how?

x

Siobhan, who had remained standing during the drama, pushes her cell phone back into her jeans pocket. "I called 911," she says, crossing herself only now that the drama is quieted. Abby suspects it's at the end of her prayers.

Jimmy is already examining, as much as he can with no equipment, the unconscious doctor.

"How long will she be out?" Abby whispers to the smaller woman beside her. Michelle looks like she's seeking an answer, but finally shrugs broadly.

x

Abby turns back to their four tables in time to see Helen Noel gathering their glasses, napkins and other remnants. Beside her own, none of the glasses had been emptied. "Hold it!" she snaps sharply enough to make the woman, and half the nearby patrons, jump. "Sorry," she says to Helen, discounting the others. "Bring me nine plastic bags, I want all of those glasses - and that cup."

Hers is the only one of the distinctive glasses that's six inches high and one in diameter, and Siobhan had had coffee, but there's no way to tell how many had been spiked. Sammy had swiped hers and had emptied it in a gulp, but this is not 'Gargle Blaster' intoxication – or rather only first part had been. But she's certain that what just happened hadn't been meant for Sammy. If the imp hadn't snatched up her glass, _she_ would be the one lying unconscious on the floor.

xx

Ziva and Michelle, as the Field Agents on site, had declared the night club a Crime Scene with all appropriate protocols in place. While Abby had taken charge of the physical evidence they took charge of the Security camera tapes as Susan, Cynthia and Nikki joined the Field Team in interviewing the patrons and staff, Susan making use of the same skills she used in Polygraph interviews. Jimmy had worked to monitor his patient, Siobhan filling the ad hoc role of 'nurse' by following the Doctor's instructions as well as she could.

The interviews, as expected, yielded nothing of value. If the drink had been spiked while the attentions of most at the bar had been focused on the impromptu entertainment, the culprit had long since fled and their best hope lay in the tape soon to be reviewed.

By the time EMTs arrived to stabilize and transport Sammy - at Abby's insistence - to Monroe University Hospital rather than the closer GWU, for which she gave the lie that Sky's Physician was connected with it, Ziva and Tina emerged from the rear office.

x

Tina Larson goes directly to the bar to speak to the Ferengi and the Vulcan bartenders.

"What did you find?" Abby demands of Ziva.

"I shall tell you later," is her reply, her tone saying that the results of this investigation are not for Non-NCIS ears. She steps over to Cynthia Sumner and, as the two women move to the unoccupied far corner of the large room, Cynthia pulls out her cell phone.

x

The moment Cynthia closes her phone Abby is upon the women. "It's later," she declares to Ziva, not willing to be put off again. Behind her the EMTs lift Sammy on a stretcher and are about to take her to the hospital, she'll go with them but before she leaves she will have answers.

"The Security tape," Ziva says quietly, "taken from that camera," she points to an unobtrusive blister in the right rear corner of the black ceiling, "shows no one approached our tables while we were dancing that 'Time Warp'. Ever since Helen Noel brought the drinks to our table, no one was in a position to spike the drink."

At that moment Tina Larsen joins them. In her hand she holds two clear plastic bags, in each a half filled bottle. One contains an amber liquid, the other a green one. "These two made your Gargle Blaster."

Abby restrains herself from snatching the bags. Having had only the blood and urine from Benes, she now has pure samples of the drug or drugs. But then she looks to the EMTs wheeling Sammy's gurney to the door. She wants to go with her in the ambulance, but it's with these that she can find the answers her friend needs.

xxx

It's more than an hour later when Michelle Palmer pushes the apartment door open and she and Jimmy enter. They hadn't said much to each other in the car and as he crosses the room and turns on the air conditioner the hot air will cool but the tension isn't going to diminish.

"I wish we could do something," Michelle repeats one of the few things she'd said since they got in the car. She sees he doesn't want to repeat his answer but

"We did what we could, you more than most people could, but the Director's the Director. She assigned Rosa Arnell's team and that's it." He hangs his light windbreaker in the closet. "She'll talk to Arnell and Gibbs in the morning, and until then our choices are sleep or sleep."

"I know," she surrenders with a heavy sigh. She glances at the cable box atop the television between the two windows: 11:16 pm. It feels more like one or two, but beyond what she'd done for Sammy "Can you sleep?"

"No."

"Neither can I." She turns to him. "Honey, do you mind if I pray?"

x

With any other couple the question would never be voiced, at least in that manner, but for them it means more than the words convey. She wants to pray in her tradition, to the Goddess, particularly to Brighid, Goddess of Health and Healing, but to do so requires her Wiccan equipment. She must cast a Circle of Protection to shut out everything but those things she wants in the shielded space with her, and to perform a full Ceremony, and he cannot participate in that. He's not Wiccan and doesn't want to be. Her 'do you mind if I pray' translates to 'do you mind if I exclude you from our bedroom for an hour or so while I do something you can't be a part of?'

"Sure. Go ahead."

She steps toward the kitchen, having to start there, but then stops in the portal and turns. "What are you going to do?"

He smiles, and it looks sad. "Pray."

x

She brings a cup of water and the shaker of salt from the kitchen, and when she passes she kisses the man she feels so guilty about leaving behind on the couch, the late News already on. There's no annoyance in him, only acceptance that this is a part of her life he can't participate in. She's not shutting him out, but his own reluctance prevents him from participating, and that only makes her feel worse. "Honey?"

"Go," he says gently. "Let me know when you're done."

"I love you."

"I love you too."

When she enters the bedroom, for now turning on the overhead light, she deposits the water and salt on her dresser, then goes to the air conditioner by the head of her side of the bed and turns it on.

In the left corner of the bedroom is her mobile Altar, a small square bookcase which she rolls out from it's place by the television / VCR atop her dresser and aligns it East near the foot of the Queen bed. Kneeling down, she opens the front and removes a box which she carries around and places on the foot of the bed. Opening it, she pulls out the purple cloth with its large silver circled star that reaches to the edges of the wood and spreads it upon the top of the case, the two lower points facing the western half of the room so the star will be upright when she steps around the altar again.

She then unpacks the box and brings to the west side of the box (the bed is in the East and she's occasionally seen the appropriateness of that as a place of heat) the equipment she needs for the Altar, her Athame; the three silk cords of head, heart and height length; the bowl for water, the bowl for salt; the incense and candles and all else she needs. She retrieves the water and salt and readies them at the corner of the cloth. Finally, for the bedroom is cool enough, she takes from her closet her hooded purple cloak embroidered with arcane Chinese symbols and drapes it over her shoulders to cover her beige blouse and pine green skirt, pulls her long hair free and then ties the cord about her throat and pulls up the hood, obscuring her vision of all but what is before her.

She lights the thick candles in their glass holders and takes up her Athame, the white bone handled, mirror polished double edged blade with her personal sigil inscribed on each side of the grip. The sigil, a circle with a line extended north to south line curved toward the right and an east to west line curved upward, has eight pointed star rays extending as four from the circle's cardinal points at the ends of the lines and another four between them. Its her personal symbol within Rising Star Coven.

She nods respectfully to the Spirits of the North whom she will address last and faces East. Pointing the blade, she focuses her mind to see the lines as she slowly inscribes the pure white lines of the six foot star as she says the Invoking Incantation. The star appears in her mind, sharp in her imagination and the focus of her power, extending through the head of the bed, unaffected by the furnishing or the air conditioner in the window to her right.

When she completes the pentagram, being certain the five points are complete without break, she turns right toward the South and the door through which she'd entered, raises the decorative blade and drops it as Jimmy's scream blasts through the closed door.

x

Her heart jumps as, unable to imagine what would rip such a scream of abject terror from Jimmy, normally her rock in a chaotic world, she abandons her work and runs to the door, one hand holding her hood from blocking her vision as she yanks the door open to admit another scream! She runs through the short hall into the living room, a thousand anxieties making her explode into the room as Jimmy, across the room by the television, screams again, backing away from the instrument.

"DARLING!" she cries, making him whirl on her. His scream is wild, his eyes wide, filled with terror as he falls back against the television. "SWEETIE, WHAT'S WRONG?"

He screams again and she runs to him but he evades her, his shriek loudest of all and she halts, freezes in place.

She knows with horrible certainty what's happening – and she has no idea how to stop it!

x

Jimmy backs away to the kitchen wall, terror etched upon his face. He stares at her, silenced by fear too terrible for words. The television on her right is on, an innocuous episode of 'Elementary' in the VCR.

She reaches out for him. "Honey?"

He retreats, slams back against the wall and his scream cuts through her. She knows how she appears, clad in the purple robe that covers her from head to feet, arcane Chinese symbols embroidered along each edge, both front and bottom, and she recalls with bitter pain his confession from months ago of how her abilities, her Wiccan talents, frightened him. It's more intense than he had told her then, for whatever has happened to Captain Benes and Sammy is tearing him apart as well.

She shoves the hood off her head, yanks the cord at her throat, throws the robe from her shoulders and lets it puddle behind her. Now she's only in her beige sleeveless blouse and pine green skirt, but the image, one she had hoped he would consider normal, helps not at all for he's beyond considering anything.

"Honey, no one's – _I'm_ not going to hurt you."

"KEEP AWAY FROM ME! DON'T HURT ME!"

She flashes back to Sammy, that same desperate cry. Very slowly, letting him watch that there's no danger from her, she kneels down in the middle of the room and settles back upon her ankles, hoping the image will make him less afraid. As slowly she stretches her right hand out to him, but he stays pressed against the wall.

"STAY AWAY! KEEP _AWAY_ FROM ME!"

"Honey, I want you to be calm. Calm. I want you to relax, to hear me, to know you're safe."

x

Beyond the words she reaches out to him with more than her hand. First she must gather her own calm and, finding that more by training than by the moment, she wills herself to project that composure across the room. She reaches out to him and he tries to merge with the kitchen wall.

She focuses on placid feelings within herself and very gently presses that quiet out to him through her extended hand, tries to cover his fear with the blanket of her serenity. "There's no need to be afraid," she whispers. "You're not afraid. You're with me. You've always been strong. You've always been the one in control."

She tries to lower tranquility upon him, to cover him as with a placid blanket, to relax his nerves and ease his fear.

He stares at her, transfixed by terror.

She can't do what she'd done to Sammy, that requires touch to drain his strength and she's sure he'll fight her before she can start. It had taken four women to hold Sammy down. She can't stand against her husband.

But she doesn't have to. As she works, focusing on blanketing his mind with her composure, she sees it starting to work. He's no longer panicked. He's still afraid, and the sting of his fear as he looks at her stabs her, but she knows she's getting through.

"Calm, darling," she whispers, hand extended, trying to feel the tranquility so she can project it into him. "Calm. Caaalm. Relaxxxx. You can do it. Relax. Relaaax. Peeeaaace. Caaaaallllmmmm. Caaallllmmmm. Caaaall–"

He bursts from the wall and slams into her. She crashes back upon the floor and he's on top of her, his hands tight about her throat!

x

His thumbs press her windpipe inward from each side, his fingers about her neck anchoring his thumbs as he pulls into her, holds her trachea closed.

Trust him to know the very best method for strangling, not pressing the muscles of her neck but the soft and vulnerable passage down the center of her throat! She can't force even the tiniest of breath through, can't utter a sound. She can't even gag against his strength, the utter silence horrific.

She tries to get his hands loose, but the natural reaction to pull his hands away only tightens the force about her windpipe. Pinned under him, wide eyes plead with him as she lays silent, straining for breath. Mouth open, tongue straining for words, she tries pulling his thumbs apart but her strength can't beat his. She tries pushing his hands together but the fingers at the sides of her neck anchor him.

She stares up into his eyes, lips and tongue trying to form silent words but blocked by the pain. There's no anger in his eyes, no hate, nothing she can understand. There's only terror and the all consuming need to destroy the thing that frightens him so.

'Jimmy... Please!'

But he can't hear this.

x

She digs her nails into his hands as hard as she can and doubts he feels it. She strains her lungs to draw a breath but she can't get a single atom of air.

She can move her lips, her tongue tries to form words but nothing can come out. Her head swims. He's atop her, she can't move his weight, can't use pain, can't plead with more than eyes and silently working lips. She can't gag, can't make a sound. She's being smothered in absolute silence. Tears slip into her hair, as silent as her death.

'Please, Jimmy! _Please_!'

The world starts to fade, grow dark. It's hard to move. Her strength is going, nearly gone. This is the end. She's going to die here – now – and her beloved Jimmy is her murderer.

She thinks of the fetus growing within her, the child of their love, and knows she'll never see their baby, that their child will never grow up, will never know the love they could have shown him or her.

'Please... stop... Our child – please don't!'

And her last thought is that, when his mind ultimately comes back, he'll know what he's done.

Light fades. The pain fades, is gone. Light and sound and pain, gone. Her struggle for breath ends. Her head falls back upon the carpet. Her eyes close. Her arms drop to the floor.

oooo

Michelle Palmer lies still.

Jimmy's hands continue to squeeze until finally a thought fights into his terror clouded mind.

He stares down at her – and he sees the woman laying under him.

'Chelle!

'Chelle is _dead_.

His wife,

the center of his life,

of his universe...

is dead.


	8. What in Tartarus?

Chapter Eight  
What In Tartarus?

Jimmy Palmer loosens his grip about Michelle's throat and his hands slip back an inch, two. He stares down at the still face of the women who had been his life, his beloved wife, the mother of their future child.

She lies still, no breath, no sound.

No _Life_.

The overwhelming fear that had ripped his mind from him dulls for an instant and lets him see his wife.

Dead.

Dead.

And he _murdered_ her.

"'Chelle? 'Chelle?" He can think now. The fear is still there, this horrible fear, but something worse now.

"No. Please. You _can't_ be dead." Tears flow, flood; the world becomes Hell. "Darling? Honey? You CAN'T BE DEAD!"

Her eyes snap open and her hands flash up to clench his wrists, her nails driven in as terror explodes. Mind rending panic makes him try to yank away from the dead woman who clenches his wrists with near superhuman strength. He screams, tries to rip away and still she clings.

He fights to kneel up, terror giving him strength to scream and fight – and that strength deserts him. His muscles slacken, he falls forward atop her but never feels himself hit her as the universe turns off.

x

Michelle lays under his weight, gasping hugely, blessed air filling her lungs to their limits even against his chest upon hers. When the pressure of his hands about her throat had eased it was all she could do to hold what breath she had, to fight the desperate need for air, to keep her face still as death, to hide the pain that tore at her still lungs. Only the training she'd had in the Temple for so many years had allowed her to keep still, keep her face from showing anything. She'd known she'd had one chance, and that was to hope and pray that her 'death' would stop him from strangling her – and that in his belief that he had murdered her - damnably close - he would release her long enough for her to focus her strength to do the thing she'd least wanted to do.

He lies on her, but not in the way she always enjoys. He's limp, drained of strength, seems as dead as she'd tried to appear as she pants under him.

Her body tingles with his strength, her head swims from the lack and then massive rush of air and the blast of physical and psychic energy she'd stolen in what was, for her, record time. She rubs her throat, directing Healing energy to use some of the overwhelming force that fills her to overflowing. She never, ever wants to do this again, most especially not twice in two hours and especially not to Jimmy - but the alternative was actual death and a dreadful un-sycronized reincarnation with her soul mate - if she even got it this time.

She pushes him up, gets enough of his weight off her chest so she can slip out from under him, forces herself to sit up, hand to her throat to continue easing the pain, and looks down to the still man beside her. "Oh, Jimmy. What in Tartarus are we going to do now?"

x

As if the Goddess personally answers her, the cell phone on her skirt belt begins to play Elvira's signature theme from her 'Mistress of the Dark' movie. She fights the tingling that confuses her nerves and tugs the unit from her waist, grateful she doesn't have to waste a moment looking at the display screen. "Abby!"

/Lion, I'm so sorry but I really, really have to talk to som–/

" _Abby Shut Up._ " She lets herself fall onto her back, her legs still trapped under his. Still gasping, she says "Call 911. Jimmy's got it. He's just tried to _kill_ me."

xxx

Mark, Jodi and Jose Esposito never saw anything from the moment of their capture as heavy black bags were forced over their heads and drawstrings were pulled snug about their necks. They were forced out the front door, by feel knowing they were pressed to the driveway to their left and then up and into the rear of a truck. A metal door loudly descended behind them and they were forced into unseen metal seats that line at least one wall before the truck pulled away.

There were so many left and right turns that none of them could track their progress, and though the maze-like path took an hour to traverse they might have eventually crossed the street or the state. No one spoke. They might be alone or with all six of their captors, it was impossible to tell.

Each of them wanted to speak, but the last such attempt was met with a rifle slammed to Mark's head, and fear more than discretion keeps them silent.

Finally the truck stops, the door loudly raised and before anyone could possibly board hands clench their arms and they're yanked to their feet, turned and forced forward, pulled out of the truck and down to the ground by more hands, too many.

"What are you do–?" is as far as Mark gets before a titanic impact to his right temple makes him stagger and his knees buckle under him. But he doesn't fall before he's yanked back up and shoved forward into other too tight hands. Pain steals his attention and he can't walk forward if not for the tight grips on his arms.

x

The ambient sounds change, implying they've crossed into an enclosure even before a metal door slams behind them, a sound of thunder.

Before them they can each hear a sound so reminiscent of a key turning in a prison cell door lock that it can be no other, nor can they miss that there are other sounds, other people in the room with them, before them, behind them. A metal hinge squeaks, again so much like that of a jail cell that it cuts into their nerves, inspiring terrors of endless captivity.

They're forced forward, pressed blind and proceed only a few steps when a loud crash of metal is enough to make them jump in fright. A moment later there's the sound of a heavy metal door, for there are few such sounds, opening, then that crash of thunder.

A second later there are people around them, hands tear at the hoods that blind them, the blackness clears and they find four people around them, two men and two women.

A moment later this becomes two adults, a boy and a girl.

"It's all right," the man before them says, average height with receding black hair. "We're not going to hurt you."

 _"Mark?"_ a woman's exclamation, drowning in incredulity, turns him right.

"Catherine?"

Though astonishment raises its own thousand questions, the newcomers take rapid stock of their condition and their prison. They are seven people now in a large room, steel walls, floor and ceiling, huge rectangular plates riveted together, the barrenness broken only by a white toilet in the far right corner beside a doorless shower stall with raised lip to contain most of the water, and a sink. The facilities are clearly designed to humiliate, for even the shower is directed to provide no privacy save what the others would give by averting their eyes.

The room is thirty feet to a side, nine hundred square feet of grey steel plate, and behind them is a six by six cage, three sided and backed to the door. Mark is relieved to seethat Jose and Jodi are here and look to be all right. With them are a man, Catherine Bachman and a teenage girl and boy.

"Catherine, what the _Hell_ is going on?"

xxx

Hollis comes awake when she feels the man under her stir and awaken with a low sigh. He'd woken her briefly, hours ago, late in the night, though she doubts he remembers it, having since been thoroughly asleep. In the dim light she'd found very clear evidence that whatever he'd been dreaming of hadn't involved car chases, shoot outs or any other aspect of his on-the-job life. She'd woken him so they could share that idea.

Now she lies half draped over him, face nuzzled into his neck, her chest on his, her right leg draped across his bare hips. When she's sure he's awake enough to appreciate it again she kisses his throat before lifting her head enough to see him. "Good morning."

"Good morning," he says and hugs her, his hands warm along her bare back. He sees the window; it very definitely is not morning but soon will be. It's Sunday and today she doesn't have to be 'Colonel Mann'.

"Sleep well?" she asks. He hadn't been when she'd woken him earlier tonight, but they'd dealt with that.

"Very." He looks up into her face. "I think I had a dream."

"Do tell," she invites, snuggling closer.

"You were in it. And we were..."

"Celebrating our love?" She uses her leg draped over him to pull him closer. "While you fed me a late night dinner?"

"Yeah. How did you know?"

"Because, Jethro honey," she moves more on top of him, her breasts slipping over his chest while shifting her hips upon his, " _that_ part wasn't a dream."

x

He hugs her, inspired to continue a very good morning and the night table beeps at him. He sighs, looking up at the woman laying atop him and tries to ignore the beep. Thirty seconds into the increasingly good morning - he still has no idea or interest in what time it is - the thing beeps again.

"Are you going to get that?" she asks between kisses.

'I'd rather get you,' he thinks, but there's no point in delaying the inevitable. Though he deeply regrets it now, he'd asked McGee some months ago to devise a system whereby if he had a voice mail waiting, his turned-off phone would nevertheless alert him to it. It was one of two features the man had installed, the other being that the phone would connect with the number voice mail number as soon as he turned it on. This first option is rapidly losing its appeal.

Reaching for the phone without dislodging the woman, he takes the unit and holds the power button on. One additional benefit of this new fangled system from his tech master is that the phone will automatically input the password, allowing even hands free service on the road when traveling at 70 mph. He holds the unit close enough to his ear to hear once the connection is made.

Whoever interrupted – when? – had better have a good reason.

/Gibbs, it's Abby!/ Abby's voice elucidates unnecessarily. But it's not that awareness that blasts sleep, and all else, from his mind.

Abby's crying.

Abby doesn't Cry.

x

/When you get this, CALL me! Get down to Monroe Hospital _now_! If I'm not there, I'll be in my Lab trying to figure out what the HELL happened! And _Don't Ever Turn Your Phone Off Again_!/ ends in a sob.

He stabs the Contact Speed Dial hard and it only rings once. She must have dived upon the phone and he still thinks she took too long. "What happened?"

/I don't KNOW what happened!/ She sounds out of control, frenzied. /I'm in my lab waiting for blood because the bottle has something in it I can't analyze but Ducky should be at Monroe. I need blood from _all three_ _of them_ if I'm going to solve this. I keep calling the hospital but can't get updates because no one there will give me any./

"Abs. Start at the beginning. Tell me who's dead."

/ _No one_. That's the only part of this Hinkiness I can stand./

"Abby _._ From the top. Everything. In order."

x

The firmness of the order seems to break through to her, for she does confine herself to the facts of what happened to Sky and Palmer, both of whom have been taken to Monroe. She doesn't mention why Jimmy Palmer and nine women had been at a club, only giving him enough to know Sky and then Palmer had been confined to Monroe Hospital with symptoms similar to those of Captain Thomas Benes, who is the reason why the agents had been brought there; that Sky had been drugged by a drink meant for Abby (his heart seized for a moment at this); that Jimmy had probably succumbed to a toxic kiss and that Ducky is on site while Abby works to rip answers from 'the bottle'.

By no means does the information come so succinctly, but is what he put together from her very emotional tirade.

When she hangs up, for the first time he not being the one to terminate a phone call, he turns to Hollis. "I heard," she says with appreciated succinctness, already leaving the bed. "I'm coming with you."

He's grateful for the experienced help, and if she isn't used to his alleged bending of the laws of Space-Time, she will be.

xxx

It's still dark when Gibbs and Mann enter the lobby of Monroe Hospital and it's not with a formidable charge to break down doors and demand answers, only because he'd communicated with Ducky on the way and that worthy meets them short of the Information / Reception Desk.

Jimmy had been brought to Monroe at Michelle's insistence, because when she contacted Ducky she found he's here already dealing with Sammy. He'd been deeply distressed to find Jimmy has also succumbed to the same ailment.

The first thing Gibbs reads on Ducky's face is intense stress coupled with frustration. "How are they?"

"Both Doctors Sky and Palmer have been admitted, though that is a poor euphemism, to the Psychiatric Wing's Intensive section where Captain Benes is under the care of Dr. Walter Roberts, a Resident on Dr. Grantwood's staff. Both, I understand from Abby and Michelle, among other agents to whom I have spoken while on the way in, show the same symptoms as the Captain. Agent Palmer had heard Abby oblige the EMTs who transported Dr. Sky to take her here, allegedly because her physician is attached here, thereby keeping security on Captain Benes's condition. She required the ambulance attendants who took Jimmy to come here are well, citing the same reason." They reach the top of the escalator and Ducky outpaces them.

For a moment only, because he stops sharply and turns to them. They can see in his expression, hear in his words, that he keeps tight control. "Agent Palmer is upstairs but has been unable to enter the Wing. Medical Personnel and Authorized Persons only," he concludes at Gibbs' questioning expression.

The answer is not enough for him, when Federal Agents can break through such red tape – or at least someone of his rank can. It's been a long time since he hasn't had the rank to go through doors at will.

"How's she taking it?" he asks as the three resume their walk toward the elevator.

"Badly, Jethro. Very badly. Her own agitation is working against her. When she arrived she was most anxious to stay with him and when she was restricted she became quite forceful, as I am certain you can understand." He pauses to make certain that Gibbs does, at least so Michelle's actions will not come back to pain her later. "The staff chose to exclude her from the Ward, citing that her presence could affect other patients, so for her it is an escalating cycle.

"Ah, and good morning, Colonel Mann."

xx

When they arrive on the third floor they're faced with a long corridor along the length of which are five white clad men and women who form the night staff and one beige and green clothed agent seated near the blue doors that form the outer barrier to the Psych Ward. She rises as they approach. Her expression Gibbs names 'devastation', feeling it's well justified.

"Sir, they won't let me in!" she announces as they approach, "I can't see him!"

"Agent Palmer... Michelle," Ducky says in his kindliest voice, "Jimmy is being treated as best the staff can. You can do lit–."

"I'm his _Wife_!"

It is not at all often that Hollis Mann will step into an NCIS situation like this other than in her persona of an Army Colonel, but she steps beside the smaller woman and takes her shoulders, left arm draped across her back, and gently eases her back onto the bench where she sits down beside her.

She'd come as the head of the Mid-Eastern Seaboard CID to assist in what has the potential to become a threat to National Security, but if she can provide distraction for a moment so the Deputy SAIC and Chief Forensic Pathologist can get in to obtain answers, while at the same time aiding a distraught friend and obtain information from her on what laid the Deputy and the Apprentice MEs low, then this is what she'll do.

She'll get her report for her own Command from Gibbs later.

xx

When Ducky and Gibbs pass the inner red door of the airlock, they come to the Intensive Care corridor with its six rooms on each side, the last ones being Monitor Office and Dispensary. Beyond another lock and to the right is the main body of the Ward, this area for the most extreme cases who cannot mingle with the lesser disturbed patients. Large windows look in on each room, but the blinds controlled in the corridor are all open now, whereas earlier in the day they had been lowered. Ducky takes advantage of the momentary isolation – an attendant will be out from the Monitor Room within seconds – to scan the rooms as he walks, then stop and summon Gibbs to the second window on the left.

Benes is in the fourth room on the right, still confined in his straight jacket, but he's seen him already and will again soon.

Within this room, hooked up to a bank of monitors that face the window and the camera in the upper left corner, IVs leading into each arm, Sammy Sky lies still, arms above the blanket. The petite woman looks smaller on the hospital bed. Beyond the steady jumps of a heart monitor, and he's not sure of the interpretation of this instrument, Gibbs sees little to enlighten him.

Ducky touches his arm, and when he glimpses the man's grim face he knows what his friend is containing. They turn to the opposite room and, looking through that window, he sees Jimmy Palmer in a heavily padded white room.

He's awake, clad in pants yet barefoot and without his glasses. He lays on the white padded floor propped against the equally padded wall, his arms restrained about his body by the heavy canvas straight jacket that secures him from neck to crotch.

It's his expression that chills Gibbs. The gasping man cowers against the wall, terror etched into his thin face. Gibbs has known war, has seen soldiers and civilians, men and women and children, suffer the terrors of death from the sky or from rifles or the barrels of tanks pointed into their faces or bombs going off under their feet - and rarely has he seen such sustained and abject panic as from this young man who cowers from horrors he alone can see.

"What can you do?" he asks Ducky beside him, his mouth dry.

"I wish to Heaven I knew."

x

"Can I _help_ you gentlemen?" a voice to their left inquires sharply with a definite tone that conveys not an offer to help, but a declaration that he's about to throw the intruders out. They turn to the white coated man standing in the Monitor Room doorway.

Ducky takes a half step forward as the man approaches, his body language saying to Gibbs 'let me take lead on this'. "I'm Doctor Donald Mallard, NCIS. This is Special Agent Gibbs. These two people are my staff."

The tension drops from the man's posture. "Ah, yes, Doctor Mallard. I was told to expect you. We've had an incident earlier where another of your staff caused a bit of a ruckus."

"Yes, I'm sorry about that." He can well believe that 'ruckus' is a mild word for Agent Palmer's behavior. "It will not happen again. What can you tell me about my assistants?"

"Well, Doctor Roberts is making his rounds, there's very little I can tell you." He glances to his right. "Miss–"

" _Doctor_ Samantha Sky."

"Doctor Sky was admitted before eleven, highly agitated, one would say hysterical, but it was a hysteria that wouldn't stop. When the best efforts failed to calm her, to the point where she was a potential danger to herself, Doctor Roberts prescribed Midazolam, the same medication as had been administered to your Captain Benes." While the man had not been present yesterday afternoon, he'd undoubtedly been filled in on the Naval connection between the three patients. "However, even while sedated she continued to suffer extreme distress, as though she were still encountering the things that were terrifying her while conscious. Dr. Roberts had no choice but to use Propofol to induce coma."

"You can bring her out?" Gibbs keeps his voice low but it's no less a demand.

"Yes. When we have some idea what's causing this and a method of treatment."

To this there can be no argument. "Why is she here instead of ICU?"

"At the moment there are no beds available. She should be, since the problem is chemical rather than psychological, but we're stuck. Simply ran out of space. But she's under 24/7 monitoring as is everyone else," he says with a glance back to the room from which he had emerged.

"Jethro, they are in the best of care, such as can be provided. They would get no better in Intensive Care."

x

"A little short of two hours after Doctor Sky was admitted," he glances across the hall. "Doctor Palmer was admitted with nearly identical symptoms. Neither had been violent, they were overwhelmingly frightened and nothing we could do could calm either of them. We didn't sedate Doctor Palmer as heavily, his condition wasn't as extreme but he had to be restrained. That was about," he checks his watch, "forty five minutes ago. Since then there has been no change. She's no longer reacting to stimulus, as you can see, but his condition is unimproved.

"I've been ordered to draw a specimen of blood and to prepare it for transport to a Doctor Shee-uto who's sending someone to pick them up."

"That'd be me," Gibbs says. He'll call off the other agent. Having heard all he wants to from the man, he doesn't mind being a specimen transporter if it'll get him answers.

x

He steps down the corridor back to the red door, certain he's making a mistake but there's no option here that doesn't involve Hell. He works his way through the mutually exclusive doors back to the outer hallway where Hollis and Michelle sit waiting on the bench. When they look up to him he sees that the younger woman is already in Hell, at least the outer courts of it. He cocks his finger to her, doesn't trust words, and she leaps up, Hollis rising more slowly.

"They've had to put him in restraints. Sedation didn't stop the panic. I need to know that you're up to this."

She looks like he's punched her, but she keeps firm control, her muscles working slowly as she carefully nods.

He's satisfied. He knew she wouldn't fall to pieces like a civilian, but control is more than not collapsing on the floor in shrieking hysterics. He pushes the door open more widely, allows the women into the small chamber.

When the blue door locks, the red one unlocks and, quite against character, he lets Michelle exit first.

x

There's no need to ask which of the ten rooms is the one she wants, Ducky's presence, together with that of a white coated man, before it is quite enough. Her left hand clutching the inch wide silver circled star that hangs between her breasts she walks slowly, control so tight she can barely progress, not allowing herself to do more than walk closer, closer still, a hammer pounding her heart to pulp.

When she looks in through the window she freezes, staring at the cowering man as iron hands tear her heart in half. She can only stare, can't fight the tears that trickle down her cheeks. She doesn't want to cry but can't manage to stop. Her tears blur the image before her but she can't wipe them away, can't do anything but feel them slip down her face.

Jimmy turns his head and sees her, though she knows that without his glasses he can't do so at all clearly even as she wipes her eyes. He probably reacts to the changed blur in the blurred window. The panic that grips him as he falls away, worms along the wall in the heavy canvas vest, rips her heart to pieces. She reaches to him, hands blocked by the thick glass, and he cowers even more desperately, writhing away until he's blocked by the padded corner.

He rolls over, face to the corner, trembling so violently she breaks.

Hand clamped to her mouth, she sobs as quietly as she can, tears blurring the scene again and she wipes them away but can't stop crying. She can't see him any better than he can her.

"He's getting the best help possible," Hollis Mann's voice at her left says softly, but she wipes the tears away, can't look away from Jimmy who presses to the far wall, cowering away from her. She feels gentle pressure on her shoulder. "When you're ready, we'll drive you home."

x

Further away she hears Ducky's voice, but the distance behind her seems like miles. "I was uncertain whether to notify her young man."

"I won't until we have something," Gibbs says, "but Abby will." Of that none of the agents have any doubt. It would take an order to stop her but Michelle knows the scientist will use good judgment on the where and the when. She hopes, with what little attention she can spare, that the how works out.

She turns and wipes the tears from her eyes so she can see the three men at the window across the hall. Between their bodies she can see something pressing up the sheet on the bed, can't see a face but doesn't have to. "Ducky?" Her voice cracks.

"Yes, my dear?"

"Is he...?" She can't steady her voice. She knows she shouldn't exclude Sammy. "Are they...?" To _Tartarus_ with it - if she doesn't get the words out now she never will without sobbing. " _Is He Going To DIE_?"

She doesn't make it, but she manages to keep her crying quiet, not something that shatters the hall with her grief.

"I promise," she hears him say as quietly but from directly in front of her, his voice firm where hers was shattered, "that I shall do everything within my power to prevent it."


	9. Don't Make Me Regret This

Chapter Nine  
Don't Make Me Regret This

At 0852 on Sunday morning Gibbs crosses the elevated platform from the offices of NCIS Director Jennifer Shepherd, who is also enduring extra overtime, and sees his team – the remainder of it – staring at him as he descends the stairs and enters the bullpen. This is the second full weekend of labor they've had, even though it is not yet their turn in the regular weekend rotation. He nods to Ziva, communicating that he'd read her report as part of the conference. She knows part of the story.

"Last night, someone tried to drug Abby with the same thing that took out Captain Benes. He missed, but took out Ducky's team instead."

"Ducky's _team_?" Ziva cuts in.

"Sammy Sky drank the stuff meant for Abby and then, a little while later, Jimmy Palmer was taken out by her poisoned kiss."

Ziva's answer is in Hebrew and no one asks for a translation.

"They're in Monroe. Sedating them didn't help; they had to put Sky in a coma. Palmer is awake but in a straight jacket in a padded cell. Ducky is there working with the Doctors. Since last evening when Sky was hit and until this is over, this is a Class A Op. Rosa Arnell and her team went off at midnight, Hauss' team had the Gamma." SSA Rosemary Hauss, Agents Christina Nunziata, Andrew Facinelli and Kevin Malone had made their reports to him and Shepherd a few minutes ago, but there was nothing they hadn't known before Sky and Palmer went down. "At 1600 Arnell and her team take the baton and we'll work with them."

"How's the Probette holding up?" Tony asks.

"Don't know. Mann and I drove her home before 0400, but I didn't get her this morning on her cell phone. But she can't work this case now."

"I think, boss," Tim says, looking past him to the bullpen entrance, "you should tell her that."

x

He turns and what he sees in the woman's eyes is a chilling combination of fragility and steel. She's dressed entirely in black from boots to light pullover against which her Wiccan emblem with the small cross within shines in the light streaming in through the skylight. He's known Abby to have her summer 'warrior attire' when she was fighting for answers if she had to beat them out of evidence, but this is the first time he'd seen this woman so like a vengeful angel – or demon. "You can't be here," he tells her.

"I _have_ to be. Where am I going to go? To an empty apartment? To the hospital to watch my husband cowering from everything in a _straight jacket_? _Where_?"

Surprised, he steps up to her. The last thing he wants to do is to hold a hard line with a devastated wife. He shakes his head, tries to use silent refusal because any word is cruelty.

"I'm going to _stay_ ," she declares, and he's amazed at her defiance. He's watched timid Michelle Lee fade away over the months, but now he realizes this is what it's taken to ignite her. "I'm going to _solve_ this."

Her eyes, turned up to him, blaze. Yes, Michelle Lee is gone.

"He hurt my husband, the father of my _child._ "

"And then?"

Her eyes glowing steel, her teeth clenched and voice grating through them, she declares that "I'm going to get him. I'm going to drive a stake through his heart! I'm going to _rip_ his heart out and _I'm going to STOMP on it_!"

x

He clutches her arm and turns her, walks her down the corridor to the elevator. When it opens he presses her inside, waits the moment for the doors to close and then slaps the Emergency switch. The lights dim to blue and he turns to the broiling woman who has to know that that outburst has guaranteed she's to be escorted from the building. He'd rather she walk out under her own power, if only to let her keep what dignity she may, but he also knows the fire that burns in her. It'd burned in him, and he'd found the balm in Mexico at the trigger of a kate.

He waits to see if she'll burst in, but she's found her balance between volcano and glacier.

"We've talked about your temper."

"I'm _in_ that Anger Management Program."

"It helping?"

"Until last night." She locks eyes with him. "Sir."

"Last time we talked about that temper, remember what I gave you?"

"Strikes. Sir."

He puts one raised finger between their faces. "One." He moves the finger in emphasis "Not three. Not two." He moves the finger almost between her eyes. "One."

"Clear, sir."

He turns and when he lifts the control the lights come on and the doors open.

"Thank you, sir."

"Don't thank me. And _Don't_ make me regret this."

xxx

Gibbs precedes Palmer into the bullpen. "All right, someone hit Benes and a few hours later tried to take Abby out." He doesn't mention the two hit instead, won't add to Michelle's burden while she's trying to keep the professional mien he'd just demanded.

"Who would want to hit Abby?" Tony asks, more to start the speculations, but Tim has a counter.

"Only about 95% of the perps she's identified."

"It is clear," Ziva says, "that whoever did it did not want her to figure out how to cure Benes."

"But who has the resources to infect him?"

Tony decides that "It'd take a top flight scientist or group of scientists, but not the ones from his group."

Gibbs agrees. "If any of them wanted him," and he wishes he had some idea what the man was heading up, "they could've done it somewhere other than at his breakfast nook."

"What bothers me is how fast they tried to hit Abby, and how well," Ziva says. "It was little more than twelve hours after Benes was drugged that someone managed to spike the bottles that were used to concoct her beverage. The video from Starbase 86 showed no one approached our tables between the time we were served and when Sammy was drugged."

"So someone spiked the bottles before then. Tony and Ziva, you're on that."

"How did they know she was going to be at that club?" Tony asks.

"The spot was reserved," Ziva tells him. "The Nights Out are on a rotating schedule, but whenever Abby hosts it we meet there, and she always books in advance."

Gibbs looks to Michelle seated at her desk. She was there too, but rather than speaking she's gritting her teeth. Anger Management at work. He'll leave her to it until she wins – or loses.

x

"The motive was clear," Tony says. "If anyone could find out what was used on Benes, it was Abby."

"McGee, what about the Acropolis?"

"Short order breakfast rush, dozens of orders coming in to the kitchen across a window. Chef would have no idea who he was prepping for."

"I doubt he was targeted from the kitchen," Michelle concurs, sounding normal. "And if the waitress spiked his food, she'd have to do it in front of a load of people. Besides, we're assuming Benes was targeted. _Jimmy_ wasn't."

"If this is a terrorist plot," Ziva says, "they may be going for random attacks."

If the woman were in reach, she'd have a headache. "And just happened to hit the head of a Top Secret Op., then aim at the Forensic Scientist investigating it?"

"Mamoun Sharif tried to take out a railroad station with chemically treated money," Tony points out. "It may not be much of a reach between the method he used and what whoever's doing now. It could be something Benes touched, maybe not even at the Nook, and when it looked like she was going to get close someone hit her with the clear quill."

"I'll have Abby look into that, but so far it's eating and drinking. There was a lot of stuff in his system, perhaps more than you can get from touching something. Meantime, what about that file you got from Benes' house?"

"Ducky says it's medical details of some three dozen subjects, but aside from identification he doesn't want to say what the numbers could be used for."

"Maybe we can use it to swing getting 'Read In' on this thing. What the Naval Research Lab wants with people's biologies is something we have to figure out if we have any hope of figuring out why Benes was hit. Palmer, check with Abby on her open cases. We have twelve teams here, does anyone have something that could relate?" He knows he could ask Shepherd about Open Cases, but this gets the woman out of the bullpen and doing something, since he's not going to send her into the Field. "Help her with the Security tapes from that club and Acropolis. Call me when you've ID'd the bastard. DiNozzo, David, you're with me."

"Where to, boss?"

"To break Court."

"Works for me."

xxx

Private Patricia Court had been taken from the NRL yesterday, having spectacularly failed the first interview in Captain Malone' office and since then had been left to simmer in Holding. She'd been allowed to shower and been provided with a change of clothing, a nondescript gray shirt and matching pants with sneakers, a far cry from her uniform, a broad hint that she'll be staying for quite some time.

When Gibbs sits down opposite her and sets the file folder before him, he thinks he hasn't seen anyone so fearful in that chair in a long time, which he considers to be an interesting condition for a USMC Private.

He wonders if it could relate to what happened to her boss? Better see about a blood test. For now, however, he'll take what fear he can get.

"You know why you're here."

"Sir, I can't tell you anything about Project Life Source."

He's gratified to finally have a name, even if no details to go with it. For now. "I'm not interested in Life Source."

Actually, he's intensely interested, but he doesn't want her to know this. The last time he'd spoken with this woman, during the hunt for Harold Kurland, she'd been a source of valuable though disjointed and occasionally too vague information. He intends to keep her as off balance this time. He slides from the folder the official Portrait of Captain Benes.

"You've worked with him for how long?"

"Only a few weeks. I was a transfer from the Necros Project."

"Why?"

"Why what, sir?"

"A confidential Assistant is an important post. I take it the Project isn't new." If Benes had been targeted, it wouldn't be for an Op that's still in the planning phase.

"I was brought over to replace his former Aide."

"Again, why?"

"I don't know, sir."

Gibbs keeps his face still. Everyone who comes into a position knows why they did. Even if there's no official word or even if there's a Gag order, scuttlebutt usually fills in the blanks. He's never known a situation in which no one talks.

He slides out a copy of the first page of the statistical table and waits. It's not a long wait.

"What am I looking at, sir?"

Gibbs gives her silence and waits for her to fill it. She finally does with

"I can't tell you want this is."

"We know what it is." Actually, Ducky has given him a reasonable theory, but that's all.

"It's Classified."

"A table full of numbers?"

"It's not numbers."

He turns the papers around, looks closely at him, turns them back. "They look like numbers to me, Private." He's never objected to sounding clueless if he can get the other to give him the clues.

"Well, that's true, sir. They are numbers, but I can't tell you what they me–" her voice cuts off, her eyes go wide.

The third thing Gibbs has withdrawn from the folder is Thomas Benes as he looks now, bound in a tight straight jacket in a heavily padded cell, abject terror chiseled into his face. He cowers in the cushioned corner, trying in vain to escape terrors that are visible to him alone.

x

"I had no idea," she whispers, breath stolen in her own horror.

"This is the result of your project."

"No, it can't be! Life Source doesn't do this!"

"What does it do?"

"Nothing!"

Again he gives her silence, and after a long time she has to fill it. "Sir, I swear you I don't know any of this."

He slips out the next photo, the initial image he had seen, the intersection where Benes had been huddled into a fetal ball, head protected by his arms, he surrounded by MPDC cars and officers, an ambulance and EMTs. He sets it next to the padded room photo.

Court goes white.

"A few minutes after someone targeted him, he had to taken to the hospital and put into that straight jacket."

"Oh my God."

Gibbs slides out two portrait photos, the elegant images of Doctors James Palmer and Samantha Sky, blue robed and green sashed, from their Graduations as MDs from GWU Medical, identifying each by title and name. "Within hours someone tried to do same thing to our Forensic Scientist. He missed." He slides out the picture of Jimmy bound in straight jacket, on his face is the same lost terror as on Benes' and places it under the graduation portrait. "Doctor Palmer is in the same condition as your boss." He slides out the picture of the blonde woman on the hospital bed within her padded room, tubes running into both arms, and places it below her image. "Doctor Sky is in a coma."

x

The tears slipping down Court's cheeks are enough testament to the effectiveness of his plan.

"I didn't know. I didn't know they were going to do anything."

"What do you know?"

"They told me they were investigating him, an investigation into his trustworthiness. I was only to tell them his routine, his schedule, his habit of having breakfast every morning at Acropolis, every evening at Towne Royale, what he did on his free time, where he liked to go, that sort of thing."

"And giving out personal habit information didn't strike you as odd?"

"Not for the Secret Service."


	10. Get Our Your Rubber Hose

Chapter Ten  
Get Out Your Rubber Hose

When Michelle steps off the elevator and enters the lab through the clear sliding door the rapid beeps above her head make Abby whirl so quickly she stumbles and must grab the Evidence Table for support.

" _You're not Gibbs_!"

Michelle looks down at herself, avoiding thinking of what her pregnancy will soon do to her bust size. The black pullover, which is tight enough, doesn't block her view yet but some day it will. She looks up and shrugs. "Not last I looked."

" _I wanted GIBBS_!"

"Well, sorry but–," Michelle gets a better look at the frantic woman as she approaches. Yesterday afternoon she'd been bloodshot and half bleary, she'd been thoroughly 'Caf-pow!'ed last evening so she wouldn't miss what was supposed to have been a good G.N.O., now she's a cross between falling down and blasting off from the gantry. "Did you get _any_ sleep last night?"

" _Sleep?_ _Who can sleep_? First it was Captain Benes, then Sammy, then – Oh, God, I'm so sorry, honey!" She rushes to her and hugs her, but Michelle holds herself still.

When Abby pulls back: "Don't say it. Please. If you say it I'm gonna start crying."

x

To avoid that, Abby looks at her friend very closely. She's usually the one who looks good in basic black, and today is typical but she actually has more color with the red heart over her own; but boots, pants, pullover top, the only spot of color on the smaller woman is the silver circle star surrounding a cross that she's worn every day since Jimmy had given it to her as an engagement present. Today that silver gleams against the harsh black. "This is a new look for you."

"Yesterday was fertility."

She forces a smile. "You had that covered last month."

But Michelle's expression remains deadly. "Today I'm invoking Justitia, sans balance and sword and _certainly_ no blindfold."

The sword doesn't sound very far away. Goddess of Justice? More like the Angel of Death.

"Just tell me you have those 'Unknowns' solved," she demands.

Abby backs away as much figuratively as literally, recognizing how tenuous the smaller woman's control is. There's fire in there, there's rage, but it rides a river of chaotic grief. Best to keep to science. Science isn't emotional.

The blood test on Benes, the last thing that was on the table when Lion had been down here yesterday, had yielded five 'Unknowns' in the chemical breakdown. She'd also made little progress on the acetycholine test.

"The bottle of Spartacus was loaded with the same chemical I found in Benes' blood, Sammy's blood was full of it, less in Jimmy's."

Since Jimmy is still conscious and straight jacketed, the blood had to be withdrawn from his leg and that took three Orderlies to restrain him plus the doctor to take the blood, things Michelle does _not_ need to hear.

"I tried the glasses, found that the whatever was only in mine and in the bottle of Spartacus, but I can't identify it. All I do know is that it's synthetic, I've never seen anything like it in nature. I tried Major Mass Spec and Colonel Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer, I tried Liquid Chromatography–Tandem Mass Spectrometry, Liquid Chromatography–Quadropole-Time-of-Flight/Mass Spectrometry, that Enzyme Multiplied Immunoass–"

Palmer's an inch away. " _What the F*ck is taking you so long_? I thought you were this great Scientist!"

 _"HEY!_ You take your Harvard Law Degree and–!" She clamps her teeth together, raises her hands and steps back out of reach. She lowers them a moment later when she sees the woman is as under control as she is – barely and not for long. She remembers a day, not long after they'd met, when she'd intimidated Palmer – then Lee – simply by standing as close as they'd just been and looking tough, towering above her in these high black and red boots. There had been true fear in Michelle Lee's wide eyes that day; now those brown eyes blaze. Gibbs had said that Michelle Lee had been vanishing, but he's wrong. She's gone.

"This is crazy. In another minute we're gonna be rolling around on the floor pulling each other's hair, scratching and biting and tearing each other's clothes off."

Despite herself, the image sparks a grin. "Tony DiNozzo's uber-fantasy."

"Don't want to hear it." She hugs the woman again, and this time it's an extra long moment until each feels the other's tight muscles relax, still longer before either will let go. Even when they do, they move only a few inches apart. "Let's just admit we're sick to death with worry over Jimmy and Sammy - and a bit for Captain Benes - plus I'm scared because whoever hit Sammy and Jimmy had been after me and _I_ should be the one in that coma - before we destroy each other's outfits and have to stand before Gibbs in black rags falling off our bodies and try to explain."

"He's already said I get only one strike."

"Hell of a way to use it up."

"Yeah."

x

"Have you told Bill Marsters?"

Abby's shoulders crash. "God, no, I had no idea what to tell him. 'Your girlfriend's in a coma, we don't know why but we're working on it'? Tony was the one who drove him over this morning on the way in."

"I missed him." Gibbs and Mann had driven her home at oh-four, but she couldn't stay there.

Abby belatedly realizes a point that, if she weren't dead on her feet, she'd have gotten to immediately. "What are you doing here? I thought you'd be tearing down that hospital."

"I had to come in. Like I told Gibbs, I want to find the bastard who did this, and if I'm not here I'll be home or at the hospital crying my eyes out."

"Okay, here's good. But why are you here here?"

"Gibbs sent me to help with the video tapes from 86 and the Acropolis, and for your report."

"That was my report. A whole bag of nothing. I sent a sample to the FBI, another to the CIA, I'll go through the whole alphabet soup if I have to." She scrubs her face with her hands. "God, I am so _tired_."

"I'm amazed you're on your feet. What is it, three days?"

"I drink a gulp of 'Caf-Pow!' every time I breathe. The blood samples, those bottles from Starbase, it's..." she glares with naked accusation at her machines, but has to admit to her friend "It's all so slow."

"You really need to get some rest." Abby had been exhausted yesterday before Starbase 86 and neither has slept since.

"Who can sleep?" She looks around the room. "I need another 'Caf-Pow!'."

Michelle sees the stack of white and red cups poking out from the garbage pail, doesn't want to think of how far down they go. "You're going to explode if you have one more."

"Can't help it. Sammy, Jimmy, Benes – I've gotta be on the top of my game."

"Your game isn't going to help if we have to sponge you off the walls."

" _Listen, I know what I'm doing_! _I know my_ Exact Tolerance, _to the milliliter_ , _but_ _I've got to keep awake and solve this thing! Now are you going to help or are you going to mother hen me to death, because if you are you can get out of here right now and leave me to my work_!"

Michelle had backed away fast at this outburst and holds her hands up, not sure if she can placate the woman. Since she'd walked in all they've been doing is going at each other. "Okay, I'll get you a 'Caf-Pow!', though I think some 'Compoz' would do you better. Then I'll get on those tapes."

 _"Thank_ you."

xxx

"The Secret Service?" Tony, standing next to Ziva in Ob. 1, can hardly believe the words launched from Private Patricia Court's lips as they watch through the one-way mirror. "She really thinks the Secret Service would put its hand in an Op like this? What is this, 'Warehouse 13'?"

"Warehouse what?"

"Warehouse 13." He gets that 'reading from the cue cards' look he often adopts at such moments. "Created by Brent Mote and Jane Espenson, starring Eddie McClintock, Joanne Kelly, Saul Rubinek, Allison Scagliotti, Genelle Williams and Aaron Ashmore. Intrepid Secret Service slash Warehouse Agents Pete Lattimer with his vibes and Myka Bering with her, well... other talents. My favorite was the long arc in Season Four: Data vs. Kivas Fajo - 'The Most Toys' - rounds 2 through knockout, closely followed by Evil Giles. I always thought there was more to Ripper than anyone, including Buffy, realized, but him and Spike being brothers really came out of left field."

He enjoys Ziva's long stare, the woman too bewildered to ask a question.

x

"You want to explain what the Secret Service has to do with this?" Gibbs asks the gray clad Private.

"I can't. I only know what they said. They had all the proper IDs."

Of course they did. "Did they meet you at the Lab?" If so, they had to go through several levels of Security. There will be visual and other records.

"No. They came to my home."

"How did they know where you live?"

"I don't know. But they knew about Life Source, enough about it to make me sure they'd been read into the Program."

That's more than he has. "What did they want?"

"I told you; information on Captain Benes, his habits, his schedule. When I asked them why, they hit me with 'National Security', that they were conducting an Investigation, but I couldn't be told about it."

"They wanted one way information. Did you check with Captain Malone?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"They said there was a leak somewhere in the chain, didn't know how high it went but they didn't want to tip their hand this early in the investigation."

They wouldn't go to a Captain, but they'd deal with a Private at her home. "You know their names."

"Agents Donovan and Jinks."

x

In the Observation Room, DiNozzo says "She's gone."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because, my Mossad friend who doesn't watch American television, Donovan and Jinks are the other two Warehouse Agents."

xxx

A half hour later the rapid Lab door signal pulls the women's attentions from their respective investigations to the clear sliding portal as Gibbs enters, finding Abby at the Centrifuge, Michelle coming out of the office.

"I already told Michelle I have nothing yet," Abby says, pressing the button to start the device. "I'm doing a dozen analyses and–"

"These Nights Out, you have them all the time?"

The speed of the question derails her momentarily but she rallies. "Every week."

"Since when?" he cuts. He'd known they were happening, were a regular thing, but he'd paid no attention to the women's extra-business activities.

"We've been getting together since the 'Photo Fake' attack in March. At first it was for commiseration, then it became a regular social thing."

"Who knew you were going to be at that club last night?" he bites.

"Every woman in Headquarters. I send out mass emails. Last night it was nine of us who went; me, Sammy, Michelle, Ziva, Tina, Siobhan, Nikki, Cynthia and Susan."

"You go there every time?"

She wishes Michelle, at her side, would field a question or two, because his intensity is too much when 'Caf-Pow!' is the only thing keeping her on her feet. "No, each week someone volunteers to play hostess, so each time it's a different place, but I like the ambiance so every time I pick we go to 86."

"Who decides who picks?" he drives.

"At the end of every get-together someone volunteers. Except last night."

"So since last week you all knew you'd be at 86."

"Right. It's never the same group each week, which is one reason we move through the work week, but word goes out to everyone by email the day after the decision is made and RSVPs come back by e-mail. Last week there were seven of us; Tina, Nikki, Siobhan and Cynthia weren't at La Mode, but Mary and Cathy were. I missed the one before that since we were on the ship, but eleven went to that one at La Brasserie."

"You made a reservation for last night?" he asks as sharply. This had been from Ziva.

"Yes. We had four tables for them to put together so as a courtesy–"

"When?"

"God, Gibbs, if this is an interrogation you should take me downstairs and get out your rubber hose."

x

He takes a figurative step back. "I'm sorry."

She manages a smile, and thinks that perhaps so many 'Caf-Pow!'s weren't so great a move. "Wow, breaking Rule Number 6, this is a day. No, Gibbs, I called yesterday around 1300 to tell them we were going to be nine. And I know what you're thinking."

"Pretty obvious," Michelle quips.

On any other occasion, that would earn her a glare, but with Jimmy a victim of the same attack he lets it go. "How long from when Sky drank the stuff until she was affected?"

"She took a major snoot-full, four square inches, one of the Absinthe, three of the Spartacus. She was drunk as a skunk in under two minutes, but it had to be ten when that drug hit her.

"That was when she kissed Pa – Jimmy?"

"No," Michelle says, still annoyed about that drunken liberty and what that kiss had done to her husband. "She was still just drunk, though enough to make a total spectacle of herself. If not for Siobhan getting between us I'd've slapped her face off." Abby glares at her, but keeps her tongue so she ignores it. "Had to be about a minute later, when we were getting ready to get out of there before we would be asked to leave."

"And how long did it take for Jimmy to show the effects?"

She shakes her head, but it's an equal part shrug. " _Well_ over an hour. We'd cleared the Crime Scene, Sammy went off in the ambulance, Abby got the bottles to be tested from Tina Larsen and came back here. That's when the rest of us broke up and Jimmy and I drove Cynthia home because she'd gone in with Abby and Sammy. We got in around eleven, I went into the bedroom, he was in the living room, I was setting up... something... then heard the sound from the living room. Had to be nearly an hour and a half since she'd kissed him."

"Small dose. Did you notice anything before?"

"Not a thing. He was perfectly normal, then he wasn't."

"And he was only afraid? Not violent?"

"Afraid at first, then violent." She shakes her head, mainly to deny that. "But the violence was fear. It was like when you're backed into a corner, then you come out attacking. It was like you're so scared you do anything you can to get the thing you're afraid of away." For nothing will she ever tell them that he'd strangled her.

x

"What about the formula?" he asks Abby.

"I'm convinced it's a synthetic, which is the real problem. I have those five 'unknowns' I told you about, meaning it's not in any system I have access to. But it can be affected by any number of things in the liquor."

"Can't you filter out the alcohol?"

"It's not so simple. Alcohol is CH3CH2OH but I can't simply ignore it because there may be alcohol in the drugs. There are a lot of things that don't belong, or shouldn't. I'm testing the bottles again now, a different test." she motions toward the centrifuge she'd set spinning as he'd entered.

"I checked to see if the Absinthe had been spiked the way the Spartacus had been, or if it was a 'half-here-half-there' deal, where they were only deadly when mixed, but no. The Absinthe is clean," she points to the two bagged bottles of green liquid set upon the table, each three quarters emptied.

"I've sent what I have in equal portions out to every Lab I can think of, marked them Crash Priority but everyone has their own ratings system but I'll get down and beg if I have to, I'm not proud. But right now I simply have nothing."

"Five things you can't identify."

"Five things so far that no one can identify."

"What do you need?"

Heavy sigh. "Forty eight more hours than I have."

x

He considers the point for a few moments, then pulls out his cell phone. "Tony, you three making any headway on the Secret Service?" He'd ordered them to look into Black Ops connected to them.

/Still a tall order not looking a bit like it's shrunk down./

"They're our best lead so far." He claps the phone closed.

"Gibbs," Abby says, too appalled to credit this. "You think the Secret Service did this?"

"I don't, Court does. Idiot also followed orders not to let her Command know. If it wasn't the Secret Service, she broke Security and her career, such as it was, is over."

"And if it really was the S.S.?"

"Then we only thought we had trouble. Keep looking," he tells both women.


	11. PGGBs

Chapter Eleven  
PGGBs

"I still haven't decided whether I should put that lock on that door so Cynthia could buzz you in or put a special elevator there in the corner," Jennifer Shepherd says to her erstwhile senior partner as he shuts the door. In those initial years she'd been the Probie and had learned a lot, enough for her to know that the first option would be a waste of effort.

"Heard a story I don't believe, have DiNozzo and David looking into it, but I wanted to run it by you."

"Oh?"

"On if the Secret Service could be involved, or behind, what happened to Benes, in which case they'd have put the Contract out on Abby."

She can tell from his tone that he's long ago made his decision, fortunately, but she sits back and lets this wash over her, tries to consider it objectively. "One thing about you, Jethro, you throw the weirdest curve balls."

She thinks as much about what she knows about this case as the men and women she's gotten to know over the years since taking over this desk.

"No," she finally decides. "Unlike the CIA, which doesn't have a mandate to operate on American soil but we've seen creative ways around the letter of that law, the U.S. Treasury Department doesn't have the resources to pull this off, nor would they have the need."

It's true. The Secret Service has the ear of the President more closely than do the Joint Chiefs of Staff or his own Cabinet. They're as likely to resort to extra-legal activities to fulfill any possible goals as Grekor Kanyicska's people are likely to go to the Police over whomever had put the Hit on him.

"Court might be a reasonable Secretary, could probably keep a day-to-day operation running since others are doing the actual work, but she's gullible, no common sense. DiNozzo says she fell for a sting off the SyFy network."

xxx

A half hour later Abby sets a thin tube containing another sample of amber liquid over a small flame when from Michelle, seated across the room watching the video of the Acropolis' breakfast rush again, comes " _Got_ ' _er_!"

"Got who-er?" she asks, turning to the woman.

"You're probably right, but for now I'll just consider her an ambitious... well, can't call her a murderer but a poisoner, yes."

"And you say I'm confused," she quips, crossing to the freestanding workstation.

"You are, but I'm not anymore. Watch."

The image on the wall mounted plasma screen shows the Restaurant from high on the wall over, Abby supposes, where the opening would be for placing and picking up food orders from the kitchen, and this because the top of a woman's dark head is visible on the bottom of the screen. The screen looks out past the counter and stools on the right, booths in a row on the left, cashier at the far left end with two booths opposite and the morning sun illuminates the large window overly plastered with ads.

The image isn't clear. It's like looking through a thin sheet of waxed paper. They watch as the waitress at the base of the image takes a tray and carries it to a booth on the left, where she freezes.

"Bad place for a security camera. The grease from the kitchen is in the air, coats the lens cover," Abby says.

"It's good enough. Look," she points to the frozen image where a woman is bent slightly in setting down food on a table, the customer in the seat facing the camera so that, using her right hand, she faces the camera as well. The coffee has already been served earlier. "Third booth, that's Captain Benes and _that_ is Debra Zapigna, the waitress who served him and who Tim and I interviewed. Now watch." Zapigna sets out the contents of the tray onto the table. When she's finished, the Restaurant stops. "See it?"

"What should I see?"

Rather than be annoyed, Michelle smiles. "I'll back it up twenty seconds. Notice the back of her hand is toward him."

Twenty seconds allows them to watch the woman at Benes' table as she collects the glass, the full plate and other items back onto the tray, turn and back away toward the camera and Michelle halts the film. It runs forward, Zapigna collects the food out of view of the camera, brings it to Benes' booth, stands beside him and lays out the various items, plate, orange juice glass, removes a small plate from the table and puts that on the tray, all with her right hand while balancing the tray on her left arm. The film halts.

"There. Did you see it?"

"No."

"Neither did I the first couple of times I watched. She's good. Now watch it at one quarter speed, focus on the glass of orange juice. You have to look closely until they clean that fracking lens."

The images run backward again until the plate is back on the tray, then very slowly the woman sets down the plate, orange juice... and for a moment after it's down the hand comes to less than a second's pause over the top of the glass before withdrawing.

"Yes. Got it that time." It had been less than a fifth of a second in real time.

"There's no reason for that, and at normal speed you miss it, but it's long enough if you were to squirt something into the glass. Look at her eye line, she's watching him, not the table. I've gotta get this up to Gibbs."

"I'll send it up. Well done."

"If I'm right and she's in on this, I'm going to wring a confession out of her scrawny neck." She's off the stool. "Shoot it up to Gibbs."

"Yes, 'boss'," she quips.

xxx

Forty eight minutes later Gibbs pushes open the door of the Acropolis Restaurant like a battleship clearing a path even ahead of its support vehicles, in this case McGee and Palmer, black identifying jackets left in the car but caps on heads even in the ninety plus degree heat.

The only difference between the security tape and what he sees now, beside the reversed perspective, is the number of people, twice as many as for the morning rush. According to his team, their target will be getting off shift soon. He can hear through the open space at the far wall the sound of plates and utensils being cleaned and prepared.

They're going to have to do it with one less employee.

"Good afternoon," the middle aged woman at the register to his right says, but as he turns to her he sees she's already recognized McGee and Palmer and is realizing there'll be no income for this lunch, yet she goes through the try for "Table for three?"

He identifies himself and his team, shields and IDs displayed. By her expression, a response to his, he sees she knows 'take out' isn't going to happen either.

"We're looking for Debra Zapigna."

"So are we," she says, annoyance heavy in her tone. "She didn't come in this morning, left us with a crowd to feed and Patti having to take the entire load."

"We need her home address."

"I can't give you that. That's illegal."

Gibbs puts his ID away and leans a fraction closer so his voice will carry no further than the woman, and he gives her expression nine. "You're very busy, and I wouldn't want to do anything to complicate your business. Instead, as a Federal Agent, I'm going to give you a lesson in Practical Law. Now I'm going to ask again, politely, where I can find Debra Zapigna, and you're going to tell me."

"And if I don't?"

He opens his cell phone. "Health Department's also Federal."

xxx

Tony and Ziva open the doors of the standard issue black Stratus across the street from the deceptively plain building that houses the infamous half-below-the-sidewalk Starbase 86. The heat, 92 at 1226 with the high due between 14 and 1500, slaps them, nearly drives them back into the air conditioned vehicle.

As they cross the middle of the block, neither caring for such inconsequentialities as traffic ordinances on this Sunday afternoon, gradually the neon sign, now turned off, comes into view on the door five feet below street level. The curved tube reads 'Starbase 86' above the foot high silver arrowhead superimposing a gold oval. On any other day Tony would tease Ziva mercilessly about her having gone to this theme pub, if only to take his mind off the scorching heat that makes him regret having to wear the black jacket and cap, but since he's here to investigate the attack on two of their own he's not in the mood.

There's enough room on the stone steps for them to walk together down to the door. If not for the distinctive sign, he would pass this pub without a glance. In fact he's spent so long in this city that he thinks he probably has.

He knocks on the wood, allows a generous four seconds, then raps again.

"It is a spacious establishment," Ziva advises.

"I don't care if it's bigger than DS9," he says, rapping harder.

"You may be surprised."

But he's spared the need to knock again by the sound of locks clicking off on the other side, and a moment later the door swings inward and they look down upon a man of about 35 years, black hair, small frame that goes beyond the initial impression of shortness by the fact that the man is standing on the second of three more steps.

"I'm sorry," the man says, "we're closed."

Blue Laws in effect? He doesn't think so. Tony raises his already prepared shield and ID holder. "NCIS. You just opened."

The annoyance on the man's face at DiNozzo's presumptuousness lasts only an instant, long enough for him to recognize Ziva. "You were here last evening."

"When two of our Agents suffered reactions to your beverage."

Her emphasis on 'two agents' surprises him, but he rallies quickly. "Yes, come in." He stands aside for them to continue down the remaining steps, then closes, locks the door and comes down to join them. "Two?"

"Who are you?" Tony asks, relieved by the air conditioning cooling intergalactic space.

"Oh," he says with a near unconscious touch to his face, "I don't have my – I'm Gerry McGrath, Quark." He points to another, taller man who has paused from his labors behind the bar. "This is Jim Adams, Stonn."

"I'm Agent DiNozzo, Impatient. This is Officer David, Pissed Off."

x

It takes McGrath a moment, as he leads them to stools set before the bar and consequently bringing Adams into the conversation, for him to recover his poise.

This gives Tony time to take in what turns out to be a familiar scene. The bar, the top of which is lit from within, runs the length of the right wall; but it's an instantly recognizable bar, even to the diamond shaped niches in the back wall stocked with horizontal bottles of every conceivable, and a few inconceivable, styles. A collection of small white topped circular tables large enough for two and also lit from within, dot a black floor painted like stars in the heavens, which he supposes makes the tables intended to represent closer suns. The carefully crafted star field covers floor, walls and ceiling, giving the illusion that the bar is suspended in deep space, and a gorgeous rendition of the Andromeda Galaxy graces the far wall.

Abby has described it to him as 'a mix of 'Galaxina's Pub' meets the 'Mos Eisley Cantina' meets 'Quark's from DS9' with a touch of 'K-7' and 'Ten-Forward' thrown in.' He decides she'd been understating it.

Seated at the bar with Ziva, with McGrath on this side and Adams on the other, he's prepared to be patient for another 40 seconds. He's pleased both men are astute enough not to offer any spirits; he's not about to trust those concoctions in the bottles behind Adams, considering what they've done to Sky and Palmer.

"How is she?" Adams the nighttime Vulcan asks.

Gibbs is a proponent of the 'Sledgehammer Between the Eyes' method of interviewing and Tony decides it will do very well here. "Doctor Palmer, the man who helped Doctor Sky, is in a straight jacket in the loony bin. Doctor Sky is in a coma."

Vulcans aren't supposed to show shock and Ferengi usually get emotional only over balance sheets, but the effect on the human personae is profound.

"The bottle of Spartacus you served," Ziva announces, turning the screws in deeply, "was laced with a set of drugs our lab still cannot identify."

x

The agents allow a ten count for the men to wrap their heads around this, but it's a fast count. "What happened last night that Sky got slipped a Mickey?"

"I don't know," is an unconscious duet that doesn't help their positions.

"Tell us about that Spartacus," Ziva commands. "Who had access?"

"We all did. Jim and I," the smaller man says, "Karen Koshi, who was your server Helen Noel, Gene Schecter is Cornelius from Planet of the Apes, Donna Abere is Red Sonja and Eileen Winthrop is an Austin Powers FemBot."

"Sorry I missed them," Tony mutters. Red Sonja's very brief armor is the stuff of legends while the bouffant haired mechanoids had been attired in negligees, but a look at Ziva convinces him that speculations on this won't be appreciated. "How much do you have in stock?" He's sure the agents had gotten the correct bottle, but how much of the supply is spiked?

"Just three bottles of each."

"Three?" Ziva challenges. She may not frequent many bars, but she knows of none that let their stock get so low, particularly on a weekend.

"We don't get a lot of orders for PGGBs," Jim says from behind the counter. "Your friend is one of only three customers who order it with any regularity. It's fourteen dollars a glass, while our regular drinks are seven to ten, so the two bottles last us a while. We have three sets and keep them in the back room."

"We're going to need an unopened bottle of each for our Forensic Scientist to check, so she'll know what doesn't belong in the bottles our agents confiscated last evening."

"I guess so. We don't get much demand, as I said, but since Dax, I mean Abby, made a reservation we knew she'd have one so we had it ready, but since we also knew she'd only have the one they were put away after the first pour."

"So in the back room, any of you could have spiked them."

x

This gets him the reaction he'd expected, most openly from Gerry McGrath. "Now wait a minute! _No one_ spiked your friend's–"

"Did I mention Palmer's in a straight jacket and Sky's in a coma?"

The anger that had leaped high in the unmasked Ferengi falls out. "Yes. Yes, you did."

"No one here had any reason to hurt your friends," Jim Adams says. "We're willing to cooperate."

"How often do you check your stock?"

"Every day when we close," Jim says. "We make sure that if we need to make any orders they're done first thing in the morning."

"So you had only a total of three each?"

"One set already open, two sets unopened," Gerry says. "Since we work them as a pair, same volume for each, we know how much is used and when we have to order."

"It's expensive," Jim repeats, "and since we get so little use out of it, we only buy a few bottles at a time."

"You use _exactly_ the same amounts of each?"

"Yes."

"The whoever did it also removed an appropriate amount of Spartacus," Ziva concludes. "When you poured yesterday, they still matched?"

"They did."

Only the Spartacus had been spiked, which from the description they'd been given meant the concoction was on something of a time delay fuse. The Absinthe would do nothing but make someone without an Sciuto constitution two sheets to the wind, with the Spartacus ready to sink the ship. For Abby, half the first volume of Absinthe probably gave her a good buzz, but Sky taking the two thirds in one gulp had probably turned her inside out. The others had described her as blasted in under two minutes.

When she'd seen the bottles when they had been collected last night, they'd looked about the same amount full, which now leads her to wonder how potent the drugs had been. At least Abby had ruled out that Part A was in the Absinthe and Part B in the Spartacus.

"We need to talk to your staff," Tony says. "Can you get them in now?"

"Yes," McGrath declares, pulling a smart phone from his jeans pocket.

xxx

Debra Zapigna's apartment is on the right corner of the right side of the fourth floor landing and from McGee's check of the Building Department records there are two safe ways out, the door at which they stand and the fire escape that leads down to the garden which is shared by this six story building and the one backed from the opposite street, the metal stairs of which Michelle Palmer presently ascends. She will keep her head below the level of the window until they are ready to assault the apartment from both sides.

There are four apartments on this side, the one they seek being the first on the right, the second of a pair set at right angles to one another, the third and fourth directly across. The arrangement is mirrored in the apartments on the other end of the floor.

McGee has been practicing, under David's tutelage, the art of lock picking and he has a chance now to demonstrate his skill by quietly removing the one apparent obstacle before them before he takes his place on Gibbs' left. There is no room for him on the left side of the door so, shoulder to shoulder they stand against the long wall, the knob immediately to Gibbs' right.

When the text message comes in through McGee's cell phone, Gibbs pounds on the wood with the side of his fist. "Zapigna! Federal Agents! Open Up!"

There's no sound from within so he reaches around, turns the knob and uses his foot to shove the door hard so it slams against the wall shared by the apartment at right angles to this.

When no sound – or bullets – come out he peers inside but can see no movement and so comes about, Sig ready and leveled. McGee follows to assist in covering a short hallway that opens midway to a room on the right and then expands at the end to a living room. Through the doorway beyond is a bedroom and then a window that overlooks the back garden and the skeleton of the fire escape stairs. Michelle stands at that window and signals him that the bedroom is empty before she bends to the window ledge.

Weapon ready, Gibbs steps into the hall, backed up by McGee, goes to the open door on the right, whirls in quickly to cover the empty kitchen as Gibbs continues into the living room, Sig aimed but with nothing to shoot at.

Holstering their weapons, the men take stock of the living room when tapping attracts their attentions and they look into the bedroom where Michelle raps on the window glass with a coin.

"Don't just stand there," Gibbs advises. "Let 'er in."

x

The search of the apartment is as orderly as they can make it and, while thorough, is not intended to be disruptive. While it's impossible to perform any search and not leave a trace, Gibbs intends that the intrusion not be immediately apparent. If at all possible he would have preferred Zapigna to be unaware that her possessions have been examined, in hope that they could derive future information from a more detailed surveillance.

That hope is immediately dashed however, as it is Michelle, in her inspection of the bedroom, who turns up the first information of consequence.

"Sir?" When he enters she's standing before a three drawer white bureau trimmed in gold. Each drawer has been opened far enough, layered from bottom to top, for the contents of each to be seen at a glance. There's precious little to see. "No underwear, tee shirt drawer less than one third full, pants half." She points to a corner where a variety of shoes are arrayed, but there are gaps in the line. "At least three pair are missing. There are empty hangers in the closet."

"McGee, put out the BOLO," he says. The man can hear well enough in the living room, though a moment later he appears in the doorway.

"According to her license and DMV information she drives a red Impala, two years old. I'll include everything but she has about a day's head start."

Gibbs decides he _is_ getting too old for this job. "I should have told you to do it as soon as you got back yesterday." He'd spent too much time tracing how someone could have tampered with Benes' food before it was served, and it hadn't occurred to him that it was done right under his nose.

xxx

Tony wishes he had put money on the result of Gerry (Quark) McGrath's calls to his staff. Karen Koshi, who portrayed Helen Noel due to an exceptional resemblance to the 60's actress, had responded immediately, as had Donna Abere who portrayed Red Sonja and Eileen Winthrop, the Austin Powers FemBot. McGrath had been cautious in making his call, using a convincing explanation of trouble for the bar that required the staff to clean up. Gene Schecter, who played the evolved chimpanzee Cornelius from Planet of the Apes didn't answer his cell, land line or email.

Leaving Ziva to deal with the Psychologist, the Warrior and the Fembot, since she knew all three from previous visits and none would be in costume, Tony had set out to pay a personal visit on Cornelius, who lives three miles away. He's the only staff member who won't be recognized by patrons. Of course, with those three women on the staff Roddy McDowell could have served without make-up and not be noticed.

He'd reasoned that two agents wouldn't be needed for what for now would just be a short conversation, and he'd been correct. Two agents had not been needed to look through the apartment house's three ground floor side windows to see that closets are open and empty, dresser drawers pulled out and presumably also empty, and that the conversation would be extremely short indeed, at least until they catch up with the Ape.

xxx

Abby had taken an update call from Gibbs to learn the agents were on their way back in, and that was over a half hour ago when "Hi, Abbsie," the so familiar, so happy voice greets her from behind and she's halfway into the turn when her heart tries to shatter her sternum.

" _Oh_ _My_ _GOD_!" she cries, rocked backward to collide with her freestanding workstation. She hits hard enough to knock half the contents to the floor but the woman she'd jumped away from doesn't move to help.

Sammy Sky stands before her wearing a long white dress, her height enhanced by white high heeled slippers, but it's a Sammy she's never seen. Her room mate's dress, her face and hands, her legs, even her short blonde hair shine, light coming from her to illume the room.

Her heart racing, her chest heaving, all that will come out is " _SAMMY_!"

"I'm sorry, Abbsie. I didn't want to scare you." Her voice reverberates, as though the vibrato that comes from her lips comes instead from all about the room, from Eternity. "I just wanted to say 'goodbye' before I, well, moved on."

"You're–" she pants, unable to take it in. "You're... _Dead_?"

x

Her friend smiles, and it's so natural that her pounding heart tears in her chest. "Guess so. Not exactly what I figured it would be." She looks down at the shining dress with radiant eyes. "This isn't real, but I figured since we go out of this world the same way we come in, if I didn't it'd freak you out a bit."

" _Freak me out a bit_? You're DEAD!" But she stops, logic - what logic there can be to this - coming in. "Honey, I'm so sorry. I _tried!_ I tried to save you. _Believe me, I tried_."

"I know, sweetie," she says, that reverberating voice coming through from all over the cosmos. "That's why I came, to tell you it's all right. I'm okay." She holds up her shining arms. "I'm better than 'okay'." She giggles. "You know, my Nana Ann met me at my bedside. She's kind of my escort, you know? But I knew you'd be torn apart, here in this lab working so hard, and that you wouldn't be able to deal when they told you, so I kind of ditched her to come see you.

"She's probably pretty pissed at me," she shrugs, "except I have the feeling that people in Heaven don't get pissed."

"Oh, God, honey." Tears break through the shock.

"No, no, no. No crying. I don't want anyone, especially you, crying over this. I was so happy to be alive, now... well, maybe some day they'll come up with a word for it. But I'm better than 'okay', and I always want you to remember that. I was inhibited, now I'm not. I'm totally _un_ inhibited. Absolutely no inhibitions. I just wanted you to know." She looks up, sees something far beyond the ceiling.

"I have to go now, dear Abby. Rules are rules, and I guess I'd better start following them, and the first one is 'no crossovers'. But believe me, I'm great. No regrets. No inhibitions. 'It's a far better thing I do than I have ever done, a far better resting place I go to than I have ever known'."

"Oh, honey..."

She starts to fade, grows translucent, still shining. "Thank you for a wonderful life. I love you."

"I love you too!" she cries, jumps to her feet, reaches out, but before she can get there there's nothing left before her but empty air.

x

Abby stands, only able to feel tears stinging her eyes, flowing down her cheeks. Sammy had said 'no', but she can't stop them. Turning to the workstation, barely making it to her stool in time, she collapses onto it, arms crossed, eyes pressed to her sleeves to ease the stinging tears.

Alone, she can't stop the tears and gives over. She cries for her sweet friend, for her solitude, for the love and life cut off, sobbing out her grief, unable to stop crying.


	12. Uninhibited

Chapter Twelve  
Uninhibited

'Very Special' Agent Anthony DiNozzo closes his cell phone and returns it to his pocket, grateful for even a few moments of stolen time with Jeanne when the elevator stops and the door opens, displaying the Forensics Lab and the white coated woman seated on the stool before her white workstation, head down and folded into her arms. He and Ziva had returned to the Navy Yard to put out a BOLO for Gene Schecter, who played the evolved chimpanzee Cornelius from 'Planet of the Apes' at Starbase 86 and who had left his apartment at warp speed, and he'd decided to stop down to check on the Scientist's progress when he'd gotten Jeanne's call before boarding the elevator.

Abby looks asleep, and he thinks she must be done in from her long hours, but as the clear inner door slides open with its rapid beeps he hears something he hadn't expected.

Crying.

No. Abby's not crying, she's sobbing hard enough to release the entire world's heartbreak. He steps across the room, doubts she's aware he's here. She can't have heard the beeps over the weeping that wracks her body.

He steps behind her. "Abs?" he tries softly, not wanting to break in on her grief but at the same time wanting to help. No notice. He puts his hand on her trembling shoulder but she doesn't seem to feel him. She weeps with such heart-shattering grief he starts to feel a shadow of whatever has destroyed her. "Abs?"

It's like for her he isn't even here. Time for stronger measures. Abby has decried on many occasions that the one thing she cannot abide is a stupid question. He gives her shoulder a shake. "Are you okay?"

x

It's almost unfair, but he does get a break from her and takes advantage of the momentary distraction. "Abs, what happened?"

She forces her head up, and carved into her face is the worst devastation he's seen on it in years. "She's _Dead_."

"Who is?" But he sees he's losing the moment.

"She was just here. She's _dead._ "

"Who was?" This is making less sense by the moment.

" _SAMMY_!" She scrubs at her face with her hands, tries to put the encounter into words. "Her spirit, her ghost, whatever, I don't know, was here. She came before moving on. She told me not to grieve, that she was happy, that she was moving on."

"No," he declares. "She didn't."

x

She looks for a moment like she's about to be mad, really mad, at his flat denial but Abby Sciuto has a first rate mind and it does not shut off. He pulls out his cell phone, waggles it before her wet eyes. "I was just on with Jeanne while I was in the elevator coming down here. She managed to get a few minutes to breathe, and used them to check on Jimmy and Sammy – and Benes. She was in Sammy's room. EEG, ECG, BP, Heart, Respiration, a whole list of things normal. She's pretty satisfied with her condition." Awareness begins to shine in those wet eyes. "So unless something happened in the past twenty seconds she's fine. Well, except for being in that coma, but _you_ look done in. When was the last time you sle–?"

He's never suffered a full force collision with a Linebacker from ten inches away before, but if she hadn't clung to him he'd be flat on his back.

x

"Oh My God I must have fallen asleep and dreamed it oh I was so worried and she was so real standing there shining and telling me she was going to Heaven and I was so upset and–!" She finally realizes he's slapping her back.

"Ab... _by_..." he squeaks, barely able to hear himself. He was caught on an exhalation.

She finally looks up at him. "What?"

" _Air_!"

"Oh." She releases him. "Sorry."

He can't say a word, using the moments to drag in great breaths.

"I _must_ have been dreaming it. But it was so real, her telling me she had no more inhibitions, which was odd now that I think of it because she's the most uninhibited person I know so why would she–?"

She freezes, and as Tony, who's breath has returned to normal, thinks that she's suffered another bout of whatever, she whirls to the workstation, her fingers so rapid over the keyboard that they seem to blur. Screens of data flash so quickly, so immediately replaced by others over and over again that he can't resolve even one of them. "Abs?"

"Inhibitions!" She whirls to him. "INHIBITIONS! THAT'S what it is, that's the answer! That's what I couldn't see because I was looking at it _backwards_!"

"What?"

She's back to the keyboard. "Get Gibbs down here!"

"He's not here yet. Ziva's upstairs. He, Palmer and McGee are driving in from Zapigna's place but–"

He's shocked when she whirls and clutches his shirt in clenched fists. " _Get_ Gibbs! Get the _Team_! Get the PENTAGON but get them down here NOW! _Tell Them I've Solved It_!"

xxx

When Gibbs leads McGee and Palmer into the Lab after an accelerated return to the Navy Yard following an urgent call to his car from his Senior Field Agent, he's surprised to find DiNozzo and David backed into the corner by the entrance and Abby standing at her workstation console, Geiger counter-like staccato clicks emanating from the overtaxed keyboard.

She runs from the workstation, consults the screen of her Mass Spectrometer, runs into her office to view something on her computer monitor, runs back out and attacks the keyboard with renewed fervor.

She runs to the Gas Chromatograph and checks something, then dashes back into her office, is out eight seconds later and warps back to her freestanding console and looks at something in her microscope.

"DiNozzo?"

"I'd stay out of her way, boss; she'll run you down like a bullet train."

He'd recently been handed the ludicrous assertion that the U.S. Secret Service is behind this situation, a claim he cannot throw away out of hand but isn't going to spend - waste - any time on. Now he's down in the lab watching his Forensic Scientist virtually bounce off the walls as she gouges flaming grooves into the linoleum.

"Gibbs, I've got it," she announces, not looking at her gathered guests. "I wasn't getting it because I was looking at it backwards, but now it makes sense!" She looks up from the microscope. "I owe it all to Sammy; she came here and gave me the answer."

He looks to DiNozzo, whose only explanation is the advice "Don't ask."

x

But then Abby turns to them, talking so rapidly she virtually trips over her tongue. "She wasn't really here of course I just dreamed she was because it was the first time in three days that I closed my eyes I mean really closed my eyes and opened them to the answer you know how you say you'll sleep on something and then your subconscious which has been working on a problem non-stop will give you the answer well my subconscious was Sammy."

"Makes perfect sense," Michelle declares, not certain if she should.

"She kept saying 'inhibitions' and 'uninhibited' and I couldn't see why, then when I had a good cry – don't ask – it all made sense."

"I won't," he assures her, barely keeping up.

She turns back to her board and, a moment after another burst of keystrokes, the plasma screen comes alight.

x

Displayed on it are two large and irregular shapes, each one large in the center with what looks like tree branches that reach out in two directions, one branch short, the other long, the contacts one's short to the other's long. The two do not touch.

"Nerve cells," Ziva interprets.

"Exactly." Flashes appear at a rapid but steady rhythm in the space between the branches. "This is the normal operation of a nerve cell, magnified a few quadrillion times. The impulses are transmitted in a long line from cell to cell until they reach their destination where they do whatever they were intended to do.

"This happens because connections are made and then broken, made and broken, made and broken, thousands of times per second in perfect synchronization, so the signal leaps from one to the next to the next and then the following signal goes along that line, faster than the eye can see. So to speak.

"Without that perfect synchronization nothing in the body would work, no signals would get through that make sense, like I told you before.

"Now I _thought_ that whatever was being done was hyper-stimulating the amygdala and I couldn't figure out how. But I was wrong." She touches a few more keys and the pulses slow, there's a definite period of light between each cell. "Whatever this thing is, and I still don't know yet how it targets the amygdala, but I'll find out now, because I know what it does. Just like nerve gas, which should have given me the clue except it's specialized, it doesn't stimulate the make, _it inhibits the break_."

xx

"I want to get an update from the docs at Monroe," Gibbs says to his team in their bullpen ten minutes later, having received and not absorbed a veritable three hour lecture on nerve cells and chemical reactions. He is so grateful that Ducky, pedantic as he can sometimes be, doesn't thrive on 'Caf-Pow!' because he'd never survive his science team. "Palmer, you're with me."

Her face alights in gratitude she won't speak of. She'd said how determined she was to do her job, to find answers rather than stare at her straight jacketed husband through thick glass, but he'd known how every minute of separation had torn at her.

But as he leads her to the elevator, leaving DiNozzo, David and McGee to track Zapigna and Schecter, she says "I have something I think will help, but I wasn't sure I'd be allowed to get it to him."

"What is it?"

From her purse she pulls out a small MP4 player attached to which is a slightly larger speaker. "This usually makes him feel better when he's had a really rough day."

Gibbs has often heard the expression 'Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast'. "We'll see."

xxx

As Gibbs, leaving their escorting nurse behind, approaches Dr. Walter Roberts at the end of the long corridor Michelle stops at the second observation window on her right and looks inside. She knows Sammy Sky is in the room right behind her but won't look at the comatose woman on the bed. She has her concern, and looking at Sammy, who she can't help and is even worse off than Jimmy, will hurt even of not as much.

The sight that confronts her instead rips her heart. Jimmy lies upon the floor, sans glasses and shoes, a day's growth upon his throat and cheeks, his arms still restrained by the straight jacket.

Even without being able to see, or perhaps because he can't, he cowers against the right wall.

"We're doing everything we can for him," the nurse beside her says.

"Can I go in?"

"I'm sorry," she says and sounds like she is, "that's not permitted."

She turns and faces the taller woman. "Listen, I've brought something I think could help him. I'd like to try. Now as a Federal Agent I could get into one huge pissing match here, probably bring my boss in as reinforcement, but I'm not going to." He'd probably whack her head once they leave the building but she's not going to get into that. "I know I'm asking you to scrap your rules, but I think I can help."

She can see she's introduced a measure of doubt and prays the woman's uncertainty falls the right way. She tries for a forlorn expression, which used to come so much more readily. Where has Michelle Lee gone when she's spent so much time being Michelle Palmer, with someone to fight for?

"What is it?"

Feeling she's scored an initial victory, the woman hadn't summoned an Orderly to throw her out - again, she reaches into her purse and pulls out the MP4 player with attached speaker. "Whenever he has a rough day he'll come home and play one favorite piece over and over until he feels better. I think this will calm him."

The woman looks beyond her to where Gibbs and Dr. Roberts confer at the end of the corridor, then she takes the instrument. "Wait here."

"Thank you."

x

The conversation is too far away and too quiet for her to make out anything so she concentrates on patience, on looking harmless. It becomes very difficult to do this when Gibbs turns his head to look at her. The near silent exchange goes on for a minute longer, then all three walk toward her. She clutches the silver circled star and cross hanging before her breasts. 'Goddess,' she appeals, 'please help.' She can think of nothing more before the trio is upon her.

"You think this'll work?" Roberts asks, holding the player before her.

"Yes, sir, I believe it will." She forces herself to let go of the jewel, to pretend in her face that she's confident. She has no idea if it will do anything at all against the drugs that infest her husband, but unless she displays absolute confidence she can forget the entire effort.

Gibbs, seemingly satisfied - thank the Goddess - looks to Roberts. She can never read Gibbs and is too distracted to read Roberts, so she doesn't know the gist of their distant conversation. Her husband may also have to be confined to a bed as Sammy is, with monitors and feeding tubes, if there's no improvement. He cannot be transferred to ICU because he would be a major disruption to those patients, nor is he fit to be with the ambulatory patients in the main Ward, yet he is so chaotic when approached he can neither be fed nor take care of his other needs, and even taking samples of blood and other things requires the efforts of several men.

x

"What's on it?" the doctor asks.

"Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata'."

He thinks the matter over for nearly too long until "Agent Palmer, I shouldn't allow this, but I'm going to only because we haven't had sufficient success with any other method of treatment. In fact, the psychological measures we would normally take simply do not apply here."

'Because it's an exotic chemical, not a phobia,' she's not about to say; it would be too close to snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory.

"I want you to understand that not only might it not work but that there could be danger if you go in there. I think it's a mistake. In fact, I'm sure it's a mistake, but if you keep close to the door and he turns violent, we can get you out of there."

"He's my husband. He's not going to hurt me." 'Okay, he strangled me but no way in Tartarus am I going to tell you that.'

Roberts turns to Gibbs as though seeking his aid in talking his agent out of a very foolish move, but the senior agent remains silent. He pulls from his white coat a set of keys, unlocks the door and stands aside.

x

Michelle, hiding the deep breath that she very slowly draws and releases, steps forward and opens the white door as slowly as she can, not wanting to startle or frighten Jimmy. When it's wide enough so she can see him cowering against the right wall it's an ice pick to her heart and she struggles to hide the pain. He stares at her, eyes wide and breath held. She knows he can't see her, that all he can see is a fuzzy change in the room, off white swinging away - if he can see that much - and light spilling in from the hall. He probably sees her as a thin black tower other than her white face, and she doesn't know how much of that he sees.

He cowers from her, breath now exploding from him to a fast bellows as he trembles, pressing harder into the padded corner. He actually whimpers. Jimmy doesn't _whimper_! He probably wouldn't so much if he could see her, what idiot took his glasses? He's staring, breath coming in stentorian gasps, chest heaving in the confining jacket.

"Jimmy?" He jumps and pulls further away. "It's me. 'Chelle. Honey?"

He tries to shrink more deeply into the wall.

'I'm not going to cry. I am NOT going to cry! Goddess, _please_ help me not to Cry!'

She wipes the wetness from her eyes.

x

She pulls the door almost closed but doesn't step in. If she approaches him she'll undo everything she would accomplish.

"Sweetie? It's 'Chelle. I brought you something."

He pulls further away and chiseled onto his face is the most horrific terror. She wipes more tears from her eyes when what she really wants to do is fall to her knees, sobbing her grief.

She backs away. Maybe if she puts more distance between them he won't feel so threatened. She slowly retreats to her left to the opposite corner. Blocked from going further by the padded walls, she slowly kneels down until she's on the soft floor, back pressed to the corner, and from her purse she draws out the device, rests it on her lap. "Honey? Sweetie, it's okay."

She tries not to let the pain invade her voice but he cowers at it, no matter how soft she can make it, no matter how reassuring. So few hours ago he'd chased her up the stairs, his hand under her skirt, invading her panties, terrorizing her under her giggles as she'd run from him, unable to escape and now he's...

She wipes the tears away. She tries to relax her throat, to keep the tears from her voice.

"Honey, you remember this. You remember."

She pushes the button.

x

'Moonlight Sonata' starts with soft rhythmic piano chords, quiet three and three and three that set a relaxing tone that promises surcease from the burdens of the day, a gentle melody of repeating notes to calm the nerves, then higher and sometimes more widely spaced notes blend in three by three by three to carry the melody along, providing two distinct patterns that meld into one, the sequence of low and continuous three the placid lake with just the slightest bob, the sharper sequence of three the sailboat on the still day, the first soft notes continuing endlessly, counterpointed by the sharper ones.

She's known him to play this music over and over on days when Autopsy is less a field of study and investigation and more a sustained nightmare, when those he and Ducky must examine pull at the heart and tear at the soul, and he'll play the melody over and over, sometimes for an hour or more, seated on the couch in the dark living room, his eyes closed, until the horrors of the day gradually fade away. She's come out occasionally from the bedroom and seen each time that he's more relaxed. She's watched when she came so quietly that he didn't know he wasn't alone, watched as his muscles relaxed, as he gradually melted into the couch and Deputy Medical Examiner Palmer slowly faded away, leaving only Jimmy.

x

She looks up and he's staring at her.

She's not sure how much he sees. Maybe it's a good thing that he doesn't see the room that confines him. She fancies he's not looking as terrified as he'd been, that she sees a touch of ease, around his eyes, that wasn't there before.

So she tells herself.

The music runs out and before the spell, such as it is, can fade she presses the 'Repeat' button and starts it again. The piano base begins anew as she finds the 'auto repeat' switch, the sustained three low notes setting the easing tone of soft rhythm before the three slower sharper notes blend into it and, as she watches, his eyes lose the tiniest bit more of the terror.

Perhaps it could work?

Perhaps the music can help him find his way back?

She'll play it all day, all night if she has to.

xx

"It makes as much sense as anything else we've come up with," Dr. Walter Roberts says to Gibbs as they watch the tableau through the window. "But we're not equipped to deal with this. We focus here on natural psychiatric disorders, from whatever source they may be, but chemical research of this depth isn't part of it. I can call in Doctor Grantwood, she'd be here in the morning, but I expect you'll get the same answer.

"Now we could care for them, Captain Benes, Doctors Sky and Palmer," he says, watching the woman's efforts in using the familiar to try to calm her husband, "keep them where they won't get hurt, treat them if your Scientist can come up with a reasonable method or actually find a cure, but that's the best we can offer."

Gibbs won't ask what the man suggests, he can hear that in tone and words, can see it in expression and body language. He grants Michelle is at least not failing spectacularly, and he's inclined to let her go on as long as the doctors will allow, but as to a cure he's left with his usual two selections; have Abby and Ducky continue to find answers while he and his team hunt the bastards.

xxx

Catherine and George Bachman and Jodi and Mark Esposito do their best to keep their three teen-aged children calm in the steel chamber where they've already spent too many hours without hope or answers. The steel chamber, 30 feet long by 30 wide, contains only a toilet, doorless shower with recessed floor, a sink and one steel door, this within a smaller cage of steel bars, six by six square, that prevents them from fighting their way free. The chamber is preternaturally quiet, not a single sound working its way through.

They have no clue why they've been abducted from their homes. The only thing they do know is that it has something to do with the only two in the groups who are not strangers; Catherine Bachman and Mark Esposito. It's clear to these two that it's their connection that is important, but what is that importance to their captors, and why are they locked here for so long in this silence, no demands, no answers, nothing?

Suddenly it's no longer silent, for a key turns and the outer steel door is pulled open. Two soldiers, clad in fatigues without any identifying patch or symbol, carry vicious looking AK-47s into the chamber and take posts at the corners, rifles aimed at the seven. Once again black masks cover the faces of their silent captors other than through eye holes that still obscure even races.

None of the captives move as a woman and a man are pushed into the cage, their clothing casual, a dress, slacks and shirt, their heads shrouded in thick black hoods, their hands tied tightly behind their backs. The only thing the present captives can discern is that the new prisoners are black.

The outer door is closed before the inner one opened, the two are pushed forward and the cage slams shut behind them.

Their terror is virtually tangible as the seven captives rush forward. "It's okay," Jodi and Catherine assure the paralyzed pair, pulling at hoods while the men work to untie bonds behind the newcomers. "We're not going to hurt you." When the hoods are taken off the expected ball gags are loosened and removed from strained mouths.

"What the Hell is going on?" the woman, apparently in her late thirties, demands as soon as her gag is removed. She and the man turn as the soldiers, as is their usual practice, exit without a word and slam the steel door shut after them, the thunderclap echoing in the chamber. The black man fixes on Catherine Bachman as Mark Esposito comes around from behind him.

" _Catherine_?" is his astonished recognition even as Mark exclaims "Jerry?"

Rapid introductions to loved ones are mingled with demands for answers, demands that cannot be granted. The woman is presented as Rita Fisher, girlfriend of Jeremy Cintron. To this point, only Catherine and Mark had any connection, but

"I'd half hoped this might be some elaborate ransom plot," Mark Esposito tells his friends and their families, 9 captives in this chamber now, his focus on Cintron, "but now that you're here the real answer is pretty damned obvious."

xxx

Late afternoon is ending with no miraculous progress, not that they ever have any. Too often, progress on a case means plodding and footwork, hunting down clues in the field but, like many cases that span days, Gibbs again finds himself in Shepherd's office, laying the groundwork for the Beta Shift's investigation. SSA Arnell is on her way up. What a Sunday this has been.

"We're getting nowhere with DePardu, never will. If and when Benes wakes up I have Palmer there and she'll get answers about this 'Life Source' thing."

"You're going to take a man in a straight jacket and interrogate him on Navy Secrets?"

"Yeah, so?"

"Hold off on that. I'm working on SECNAV and I'll probably get better answers from him. Meantime, where are you with our suspects?"

"We have BOLOs out for Debra Zapigna, the waitress from Acropolis, and Gene Schecter, the monkey from Starbase 86."

"Cornelius, from Planet of the Apes." Cynthia had brought much detail back from the disastrous 'Girls Night Out' last evening.

"A guy in a full chimp suit that four tables of agents can't ID, a waitress who's in the same wind as the monkey and a Marine Private who thinks she's following orders from the Secret Service; two people in straight jackets and one in a coma in a Psych Ward who the doctors can't help because they're drugged, not really psyched; plus Abby's dead on her feet from three days non-stop, Palmer's camped out at the hospital and it's only four."

Shepherd knows that the man's 'only four o'clock' means that he and his team have been on continuous duty anywhere from ten to thirty four hours this weekend and that having come off five straight weekdays of 10 hours each. He would push them for solutions until this case is solved but "Shut them down."

She'd expected stare #8 and so isn't disappointed, but "People don't think well after more than 80 hours. We're into Beta Shift so make sure Rosa Arnell and her team have everything they need. She'll turn it over to Hauss and her team. Send your people home, drive Abby out if you have to kidnap and gag her, and I'll see you all in the morning."

xxx

When Tim opens the apartment door he's mildly surprised to hear familiar music coming from the laptop beside his writing desk. Actually the music is not familiar but the style is. Shav has the unit hooked into the speakers, the Internet Radio opened to her favorite music and news station from Dublin. Shav and Bridget, both in pajamas already even though it's just a few minutes after 1700, sit on the couch reading a book and as soon as the girl sees him she runs with high greeting " _Hi Uncle Tim_!"

"Hi, honey," he says, drops down to one knee so he can greet the child. He hadn't seen her since early morning, when he'd had to leave instead of joining them at Saint Mary's. Monday doesn't seem likely to be much better. He's home at a reasonable hour for the first time in too long, but Shav's already in her red pajamas, obviously in effort to get the girl readied for the idea of sleep. He wishes her luck.

Bridget is wearing, on a short red ribbon about her neck, the black leather display back through the holes of which Shav has threaded the ribbon to hold the gold shield in place. "Very cute," he says, touching the gold metal.

"Aunt Siobhan said I could wear it when we're inside."

"She gets more display time with it than I do," his wife says, picking up the book and crossing the room to them. This he knows to be very true. Shav's NCIS shield is nearly identical to his own, except that 'Special Agent' has been replaced by 'Chaplain'. Shav wears it only rarely, the white wraparound collar about her throat normally enough to grant admittance to most places she cares to go, and in Headquarters she prefers to accentuate the Religious aspect of her connection rather than the Agency's. The shield has probably seen more daylight this afternoon than it has in several months.

"You look good in it," he tells his niece, which brightens her even further. He kisses Shav, which brightens him too.

x

"What are you doing?" he asks the girl.

"Looking at pictures. Aunt Siobhan's tellin' me stories."

He sees the book in her hand. 'Myths and Legends of the Emerald Isle'. "How nice," he says with an arch look as she hands it to Bridget and she takes it back to the chair. His whisper is carefully soft. "I thought you promised."

"'Oh, I've given you no word to keep, Admiral,'" she reminds him, imitating Kahn Singh's rather triumphant speech on his reunion with Kirk on the bridges of the contending Starships. "Bridget has been enjoying some very nice music, learning a little about the world, though I admit she does get a little lost in the accent and I have to explain quite a bit." He can't miss her blinking, perhaps so quickly she doesn't realize it. She never does. But it has been a long day for her, keeping up with the Power Battery.

She drops her voice to a whisper. "How are they?"

"No better," he says as quietly.

She crosses herself, a brief and silent prayer before returning to a normal volume. "Are you ready for dinner?"

'You're not.' "In a moment." He turns to Bridget seated upon the couch that's to be his bed again. "Sweetheart, I have to talk to your aunt for a few moments."

"Okay, uncle Tim." She pulls the large book onto her lap. He leads Siobhan into the bedroom.

"Now be good," she admonishes with a teasing smile as she closes the door. "We have company."

Company had slept in this room last night while he'd had the couch, and today will be no different. His wife's in her red 'company pajamas' the most demure set she owns, which she only wears on such occasions, wearing half lengths on cool nights and particularly suggestive ones when she wants to be warmer but "This won't take long."

"Too bad," she says as she puts her arms about his neck, draws him close for a proper kiss. It gives him the opportunity to explore what she's not wearing under the red. But when she draws back again: "How are they? Really?"

"Bad."

"I'm so sorry I couldn't get there, but I thought it best..." she finishes with a glance at the door.

"You're right. And you couldn't have gotten in anyway. Michelle couldn't even, Gibbs and Ducky had to clear the way for her. They're in an Intensive Psych Ward off the main one. Abby can't even get in, though she's chomping at several bits by now and, well, Captain Benes doesn't seem to have anyone."

"Darn. I _should_ –"

"They're getting all the help they can, but everyone's scared, in several senses. None of them can have visitors, we're working around the clock at HQ. If not for the Beta Shift having this where we left off Gibbs would–"

"I know."

x

He draws his weapon, takes it to his dresser and pulls out a steel box, uses his key to secure the Sig and puts the case into the back of the highest drawer, making sure it's out of reach of young hands. Then he turns back. She's still blinking quickly, not constantly but often enough. "But that's not want I wanted to talk about. I'm concerned about you and Bridget."

"She should be." The words make it clear she's not talking about the girl.

"That's exactly what I'm concerned about. I'm not getting in the middle of how you deal with her and your sister. She's your niece–"

"Your niece.

"But yours by blood, and how you deal with her and Lenore is your business. I ran interference years ago, not now. I'd hoped you two would have worked things out."

"So did I. I want to, but I don't see it happening soon. You know it started when I went to New York and started playing the fiddle instead of the harp. An O'Mallory playing the fiddle is just too much for her."

x

He recognizes the reference, not quite as originally intended, to the ballad 'The Orange and the Green', intended to represent the difference, the gulf, between Anglican (or Episcopal in their case) and Roman, both equally catholic but light years apart in other things.

When Shav had found rejection in her home parish of Saint Patrick's R.C., she'd moved to New York, not a direct result of that difficulty, but she'd discovered welcome and a new home in Saint John's Episcopal, and that had set her on a path increasingly distant from her family's roots.

Her family, on the whole, had over the years come to accept her choice - Ordination as a Priest had gone a long way toward establishing her distinction as a woman with her own path - but her sister had not been able to bridge the gulf.

Thus the references which Bridget, with the recorder set deep in every child, had picked up on such as that Shav 'should be' a Nun, the highest a woman can rise in the Roman side, and undoubtedly the 'shabby' reference had come from there as well. Lenore should have learned the lesson Art Linkletter used to teach his audiences about what kids say.

Whatever the tensions between the sisters, yesterday morning had seen one thing: it had gotten Shav's 'Irish' up.

This is going to be an interesting week, he reflects.

'Felis Demulcta Milis' indeed.

Lenore should have stroked the cat.

x

But now "I'll send Bridget in here, you can read to her while you're both dozing off."

She blinks at him. "What do you mean?" She glances to the clock on her bureau, it's not yet 5:20. They're dressed for bed, but in her case it had been more hope, and he knows it was not quite for herself.

He doesn't know when she'd gotten to sleep last night, the bedroom light had been on when he had, but he knows she's had a longer day than he's had. She was up early to make breakfast before going to the Church, and when he'd come in here to get his weapon he'd found her bureau set with the Paten, Chalice and all else from her Call set. According to the 'Communion under Special Circumstances' they'd done the Readings, Psalm - Bridget had done the Psalm well - and then she'd given him the Eucharist and, as she does every morning, she'd sent him off with a Blessing.

Then Bridget had kept her busy for the rest of the day, all this on top of a late night when Sammy had been stricken.

Enough.

"You." He points to the King size "Bed." He gives her his stare #6. "Now."

"I _beg_ your pardon," she says, unable to fight a smile.

"I love it when you beg, but you're blinking. A lot."

She fights her eyes wide, even knowing the game is hopeless. "Am not."

"Bed. Or I'll throw you on it."

She gives up the attempt and blinks more for the fight. She shrugs, defeated, goes around and lies down on her side of the mattress. "Yes, your Majesty."

"You know," he says, satisfied that she'll have a chance at reasonable rest tonight, "I could get used to that."

He ducks the thrown pillow, but she'd compensated.

Author's Note: Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata' can be heard from various sites on the web.


	13. You Get Those Bastards

Chapter Thirteen  
You Get Those Bastards!

Sitting up asleep, even on a padded floor and tucked into a padded corner, is a muscle torturing experience but slowly Michelle Palmer feels back in her body and back into the world. A piano is playing a particularly soothing melody and she realizes she'd dozed off - after how long? - and had left 'Moonlight Sonata' on continuous play on the unit in her lap.

She remembers fighting sleep for a long time, a very long time as the music lulled her, but she doesn't remember having lost.

She sees little from the outside and hears less. The lights in the hall are bright through the window to her right, but she does remember them having been turned down. How long has she slept? More to the point, how long did these doctors, nurses and whatever _let_ her sleep? She turns her wrist, looks at her watch but can't focus on the small face.

Every muscle that doesn't hurt aches, and when she looks up as high as she can she feels the new aches run down her back from neck to dead butt. She switches the player, which must be near death, off and looks to the opposite corner of the padded cell.

Jimmy lays in that corner and picks his head up when the sound cuts off in the middle of a piano key stroke. On his face is not fear but a blend of curiosity and strain as he squints to see her. "'Chelle?"

To try to get up would take a second longer than she's willing to spare as she crawls across the room, her heart reaching him first.

xxx

Gibbs strides into the Forensics Lab at precisely 0800, having no greater love for Mondays than he's ever had and he isn't surprised to find Abby standing at her Evidence table taking a mighty draught through the straw of her first cup of 'Caf-Pow!' At least he'd thought it was the first, but as he gets into the room he finds two cups stacked within one another on her work station. "Morning, Abs."

She turns to him and he's stunned. Her hair is disarrayed, yesterday's clothes are under her white lab coat and he could use the red in her eyes for a hand drawn map. "Oh, hi Gibbs," is a quiet sigh.

His pointing finger could be a cannon. "I drove a woman home last evening, and I was sure it was you."

"Did you have a good time?" comes with a little more energy, but he's not in the mood.

"Did you sleep at all?"

She rubs her eyes and puts down the cup. "Gibbs, I can't. I can't stay there. It's too quiet. I have to solve this."

"We've been over this before." He won't think of how many times.

"It's more than going home to a quiet, empty apartment. It's more than knowing that Michelle slept alone last night and that it's my fault. It's more even than the job, finding out what happened to Benes. It's... I have to solve this."

"How is this your fault?"

"Cornelius - Gene Schecter - he targeted _me._ If not for that _stupid_ game _I'd_ be in that hospital with tubes running into me. And I would _not_ have kissed Jimmy Palmer. Sammy and Jimmy would be okay–"

"And we'd have no one who can find the antidote."

"You _do_ have no one who can find–" is interrupted by his cell phone.

He pulls the unit out. "Yeah, it's Gibbs. Michelle?"

If Abby's eyes could widen any further... but he doesn't need her distraction or any appeal she'd make. He turns away, steps toward the door. "Michelle, stop crying." He doesn't hear Abby's sharp gasp, doesn't see her hands flash to her mouth to contain the shriek that can't come. "Palmer, I can't understand you. Stop crying."

x

Abby can't get her lungs to work as she feels tears stream down her cheeks while the pain in her chest, whether from seized breath or shattering heart it doesn't matter, grow to agonizing.

"Got it." He closes the phone, puts it away, but stands facing the door and for every second he doesn't move she spends a year in Hell. His shoulders drop and a huge lance spears her heart. "You can stop rushing the antidote," he says and turns around.

Seeing his face, her lungs burst and breath explodes from her. "No, Gibbs, _NO_!" she cries through her blocking fingers, her eyes so wet his image swims before her.

"What are you–? Abby, Jimmy–"

" _Don't_ say it! Don't!" She manages to force her hands down, breath coming in heavy pants, tears flooding. "If you don't say it I don't have to hear it and if I don't hear it then for a few moments longer I–!"

"Abby, Jimmy's fine."

"I KNOW!" she cries, tears streaming down her cheeks. "How can you just _STAND_ there? Your friend – _our_ friend – Michelle's _husband_ is DEAD and you stand there and tell me he's fi–"

x

She blinks, wipes the tears away and blinks again. "Fine?"

"Fine. He came out of it this morning."

x

To Gibbs it's like watching a human computer reboot before she turns and, slow and unbalanced, she steps to her workstation, pulls herself onto the stool, stares straight ahead. "Fine," she whispers.

"Fine. He came out of it overnight. Benes is still under. He got a bigger dose, but Palmer says he's improving."

"But this proves it's temporary, must have worn off, metabolized maybe, I'll need blood tes– _What about SAMMY_?" blasts out as she jumps from the stool and lands four feet closer, the stool making her jump again as it crashes to the floor.

"She got the biggest jolt of all, but they say she's improving. They're running more tests now."

"I want the results of every single test they did on Sammy, Jimmy and Benes! I want blood tests, urinalysis, her EEG, ECG, acetycholine levels and all other results and _I want them here_ _Now_!"

Abby, so exhausted she'd been staggering yesterday, dead on her feet this morning and so battered that emotions beat reason by three to one, is back with a vengeance.

x

He won't tell her to be patient, that he'll arrange for Palmer to fax all the reports but before he can reach for his phone it rings in his pocket. He pulls it out and reads the outer screen before opening it. "DiNozzo, what've you got?"

/I've _got_ Debra Zapigna's cell phone pinging off a tower in Shaw and Ziva has Gene Schecter's phone heading west through Virginia. She's tracking the ape./

"Kids can't stay off those things. All right, you and Ziva take Shaw, have McGee meet me at my car. Are the Virginia Troopers alerted."

/Got Park Rangers ready with tranq guns./

Sometimes he's not too sure about DiNozzo's sense of humor, but he'll let this one pass. He closes the phone. "You. Take a nap. I'll bring you back a monkey to interrogate."

He's part way out when "Gibbs?"

He turns back. Her fiery eyes are so incandescent they threaten to set her hair ablaze. "What?"

"You _Get_ those Bastards!"

xxx

Shaw, like any other community, cannot be defined by borders, though you can find the streets on a map within a triangle defined by Florida, Rhode Island and Vermont Avenues. You can find its center, you know it when you're in it, but other than the defined edges on that map when you're there you cannot find a line of demarcation that determines where one community shifts over into another, where you can stand and say 'here begins Shaw'.

When Tony DiNozzo and Ziva David track the signal from Zapigna's cell phone by the tracker obtained from Cyber Crime, they find themselves in a plaza. Surrounding them are six twenty two story cookie cutter residential buildings of probably a dozen apartments per floor, three buildings to a long side separated one from another by fifteen yards and over thirty yards across the plaza, constructed with so little imagination or spirit that you can enter a random lobby and have no idea you're in the wrong building until you get upstairs, reach 'your' door and find the key doesn't work.

For the moment the agents don't depend upon doors or keys, for as they enter the tremendous plaza with its over-sized cement pots of eight foot trees and dark green benches that line each side, scores of men, women and children taking their ease or playing, their attentions are locked by the bullet that ricochets off one of the white painted pots!

x

"GET OUT OF HERE!" Ziva yells, an unnecessary warning as that shot and impact has turned the sedate plaza into a madhouse, the screaming, frenzied mob running in every possible direction, completely obscuring sense. They duck behind the closest cement pot.

Another shot skims the cement ten feet to their right like a stone thrown upon a lake and lost to sight.

But in that moment they see, near the entrance to the middle building on their left, over three hundred feet away, the only person not running.

Debra Zapigna stands, right arm extended and as the screams fade she fires again. Tony has no idea where the bullet went. One handed, the shot could go anywhere beyond them, most likely upward, and as the woman ducks into the building they break cover, the plaza having been very quickly cleared.

They'd been recognized by their caps and neither gives voice to their thoughts. While approach to the building is hurried, it's by no means unreasoned. They're pursuing a woman who has already demonstrated a supreme disregard for life, as well as little to no knowledge of guns. They move cautiously, having the entire plaza to themselves, but they could well get to the building and find her taking aim from the other side of the glass.

x

Before they reach the edge of the building another young woman dashes out through the glass doors, sees them with their own guns out and screams.

"Get away from the door!" Tony commands and, to the woman's credit, she obeys quickly, ducking behind a stone pillar that holds the awning above the entrance. "NCIS, do you know where she is?"

"She - she - she - she went upstairs!"

Now they can see through the door and window which together offer a panoramic view of the wide lobby that it's empty. The overhead display of the distant elevator still reads 1.

"Why is it always stairs?"

"She does not live here, Tony," Ziva reminds him. According to the records they'd pulled, she lives all the way across the district, but who and what she knows about this building makes it potentially their quarry's native ground.

x

Even before they enter, the woman breaks cover and runs, they care not where. No matter how quickly or slowly Zapigna entered, and if she did take the stairs, they must move slowly. She could be behind any turn, any wall.

The proper thing for them to do, as they enter the lobby, is to try to secure the building as well as they can; two people only able to secure a building at opposite corners, and call for as large a force as they can get to search a twenty two story building.

But there's an alternative, one very rarely offered to them but on this occasion DiNozzo's not going to turn it down. Sig in his left hand as Ziva secures the lobby, he pushes open the stairwell door and takes out his cell phone.

It's fortunate that McGoogle's research has been as thorough as Zapigna's use of social media had been careless. Consulting his pad, he punches in the series of numbers but it's the stairwell to which he listens. High above, he hears music play and signals to Ziva to move quietly past him and he closes the door as she carefully but quickly ascends.

The stairs form a squared off helix, a dozen steps along each wall with a wide drop down the middle. On each east and west side is a door and they'd already seen a corresponding staircase across the lobby. They must hug the wall to avoid a direct line of fire, and therefore can't get too close.

x

They climb as rapidly as possible, and nearly thirty seconds of quiet tracking pass before the music high above cuts off and a voice, distant and in his hand, answers. "Who is this?"

"Debra Zapigna, this is Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo, NCIS," he says as they climb as quietly as possible. He can do nothing about the reverberation he hears in her voice and the obvious answering vibrato on his own, but if he can keep his voice low and their steps quiet they can gain on their quarry. "There's no need to run. We only want to talk."

"Talked to you before. Got nothing to say."

"That wasn't me," he assures her, climbing two steps at a time, pulling himself up so his footfalls won't reveal his position. Her steps have not resumed.

"What makes you think you're better?"

"I just am."

Something must have alerted her, perhaps his words ascending the staircase because she's moving again. He can hear her steps better over the phone but still can hear shuffling steps high above. They've closed the gap but not by enough.

x

It's hard to talk and climb, but he has to try. "Debra, there's no need for this."

No answer.

"Debra?"

The blast, both an eighth of inch from his ear and through the stairwell nearly deafens him as he yanks the phone down, clenching his teeth to keep from saying the thing that flashes into his mind.

He doesn't know where this bullet hit but Ziva isn't laying on the steps writhing in pain so he's content. Beyond the blast he can hear little. Adrenaline helps him to climb but he's getting winded.

He cautiously checks the phone as he climbs. "Debra?" More stairs. "That wasn't very nice." Silence. "Debra?"

"She hung up on you?" Ziva whispers, glancing back from above.

"So rude," he says as quietly. "How much further?"

"Nine stories."

"So glad this is only twenty two." The long climb in Ghostbusters comes to mind. As Venkman had said: 'Well, when we get to twenty, tell me... I'm gonna throw up.'

They hear panting above and hurry to close the distance, but then another blast nearly deafens them, the bullet hits a wall more than twenty feet away. It doesn't slow them, for they never had a clear line of sight on their target. She's firing wildly.

x

The hard opening of the roof door onto the outer wall reverberates through the stairwell and Tony and Ziva increase their speed. Their quarry, still armed, has ascended as far as she can go.

When they reach the last flight they must be cautious, Sigs ready. They reach the top, press to either side of the open door, but a peek past the edge reveals no motion.

The roof, three hundred by three hundred, is decorated with planters along the raised rims, recliners and benches, umbrellas and all the usual accouterments of the fabled tar beach for those unlikely to get to real sand and surf but can afford the substitute amenities at high vistas and higher rents. They also see their target, over forty feet away, looking for someplace to go. Sadly for her, the nearest building on each side is over fifty feet away, while those on the opposite side of the courtyard are nearly a hundred.

With the exception of umbrellas and the outcroppings of two stairwells, there is no place for Zapigna to hide. Halfway across the expanse she turns and they duck into the sides of the door, plenty of space afforded them. One hand extended, she fires and they hear the bullet hit the top of the tower, a rain of tiny debris falling upon the rooftop.

" _Go Away_!"

They look out, see her backing away, the gun still extended one handed toward them. Tony, recognizing the weapon, steps out, followed by Ziva, and they move apart, stepping clear of the structure.

"Go away! I'll shoot!"

They step further apart, Sigs aimed for kill shots, separating to make aim more difficult for the woman but then Tony puts up his weapon, straightens and puts it back into his holster.

"That's a Ruger six inch revolver." She turns the weapon to look at it, then extends it again toward him. "You fired three shots outside, two on the stairwell and the last one three feet over our heads. Sorry, pardna," he says with an atrocious Western movie drawl, "what you'se gots there's a six shoota. You'se oudda boollets."

She squeezes the trigger, a convulsive move that makes the gun jerk but the hammer falls to an empty cartridge and he releases pent up breath. Until this moment there had still been the possibility she had reloaded, that his brave words were empty, but no longer. Ziva puts away her own weapon.

She squeezes again and again and again, producing nothing but impotent clicks.

"Twenty two stories up - thanks for the climb, by the way - only door openable from this side's behind us, you need a key for _that_ one, and even if that were a ten shooter you'd still be out." He hopes she won't call his bluff about no escape on the other stairs, but it's already far too late. "We've reached the point in the scene where you give up."

x

Seventeen feet apart, he and Ziva advance and Zapinga throws the gun, but her pitch is as bad as her firing aim and DiNozzo doesn't even have to evade as the weapon passes four feet to his right to clatter onto the roof far behind them. They close upon the woman, Ziva grasps her left arm while Tony steps behind her and pulls her arms back, closes the silver cuffs upon her wrists.

"You have the right to remain silent," he commences the recitation of her Warning as, together, they escort her toward the door. This time they'll use the elevator.

They get only three feet, Ziva angling to pick up the gun, when Zapigna stops. "Wait!"

Tony does, willing to let her talk. He's already told her the consequences, so if she wants to tell him anything he'll listen. He steps around to face her. "Wait for what?"

Agony explodes in his crotch and instantly blasts to every organ in his body as he crashes to his knees, barely able to force his eyes to stay open.

And what he sees will stay with him through the last of his days and follow him to Heaven or Hell, whichever his fate. Zapigna runs and with a sharp exclamation Ziva gives chase, twenty feet, forty, she jumps up, uses the bench against the waist high wall as a step and she's gone.

Her shriek tears his soul. Kneeling, unable to have done anything, he gives in to the pain as the scream goes away, further away, further, fades, stops too suddenly.

Ziva halts before reaching the edge, looks over.

He never wants to see.

xx

DiNozzo's unwelcome call to Gibbs raises more questions than the Agents originally had for their suspect. A short while ago Debra Zapigna had been wanted for questioning on suspicion of ADW in the form of the Fear Poison, to which she'd added discharging a weapon, willful disregard of life and attempted homicide of two Federal Agents. However, in all these things she would have been Tried with the aid of a lawyer and would, at most, face prison time, hardly enough incentive to make jumping two hundred twenty feet to a very messy death a preferable option.

Gibbs can hear the sirens of several MPDC vehicles converging on the site, expecting his agent is calling from the plaza. "Keep control of the scene. Let Ducky know what we've got."

/No problem there,/ DiNozzo assures him before the unit goes dead.

"Jumped off the roof," McGee mutters next to him. Gibbs just shakes his head.

"You still got a fix on Schecter?" The man had been tracking the Ape's cell phone on the screen of his PDA.

"Strong and clear. He's five miles ahead, but now he's stationary. There's a rest area, strip mall, gas station, wherever he is we should be able to–" he's driven back into his seat by yet another acceleration, "catch him."

xx

It's at the strip mall that they lock in on his signal when they're a quarter mile out. Highway traffic is heavy for a Monday afternoon but still flows steadily and, fortunately for McGee's nerves, Gibbs' yellow and black rocket slows as they turn into the first of three entrances along the wide length of asphalt. Their quarry has been stationary for three minutes.

The huge lot, however, is crowded with some thousand cars of all makes, models and colors, a montage of vehicular confusion. They stop at the highway end of one of two score double lines. "Which one, McGee?"

"Er, I can't tell, boss."

He hates to have said it as much as he hates the senior agent's turn to him. "What do you mean, you can't tell? You've been tracking him all this way."

"I've been tracking a moving signal from his cell phone on the highway, and can tell to within a half block where he was." He waves his hand to the PDA in his hand. "But the resolution on this isn't good enough to trace exact positions. He's here, in one of these stores, but I can't tell which–" He must clutch the door as Gibbs launches the Hemi along the line of cars until he's at the end, one store before them.

They're already familiar with Schecter from the image on his Driver's License, though McGee wouldn't mind it if their prey were still dressed as Cornelius from distant future Earth. The information on the card puts Schecter at five nine with brown hair and at that time a beard. With luck, there will be little (hopefully no) change from that image. McGee looks right, having a good view of the length of stores and the too many people crossing the lane into and out of said stores.

Now it's a simple, or not so simple, stake out. If they can catch Schecter before he gets back to his car, they can take him down here.

xx

McGee is starting to feel the strain of staring along half a city block's length at uncounted numbers of people coming and going across the busy lane, for though the stream isn't steady there are at times so many individuals, couples and families that they block views of the more distant ones, making a tense stand in which he must constantly check the image on his PDA and hope for no movement. He has no fear of Gibbs' anger if their quarry should slip past and the dot on the screen start to move along the highway again, it's the humiliation of failing to observe that–

He's driven back into his seat again, and this time pressed to the door on a hard left and he has to drop the PDA into the seat between his legs, left hand finding and loosening the Sig in its holster. Ahead now, ten car lengths away, he sees the man step to the left lane on his way to his car. He unlatches his seat belt, pushes the straps aside and grips the door handle.

He's ready as Gibbs stops. Their target is laden with white plastic bags. Gibbs, to prevent Schecter's hearing him, halts three widths back. There are six people walking in each direction along the lane. They're out their doors together and the man hasn't turned.

"SCHECTER!" Gibbs' shout fills the air as the agents, Sigs aimed beyond the open doors, cover the startled man who whirls, white bags falling to the asphalt. "NCIS!" The man wears a light windbreaker, but what it breaks is his reach for the gun shoved into the waistband of his jeans. "DON'T DO IT!"

Outdrawn, he sees the wisdom of the advice.

Unfortunately, everyone before them has also frozen, held by all from surprise to fear at the tableau of two men at the open doors of the Hemi holding guns on a third, and in that moment of confusion Schecter bolts six feet to his left. "FREEZE!" works only for the blonde woman whom he grabs and pulls in front of him.

This instant of motion is enough to make the other people rush for safety in either direction behind cars, but neither Agent can fire on the man who holds the woman before him and gets the gun loose and pressed to her head.

Crying, she's too terrified to move.

x

"You don't want to do this, son," Gibbs says. "We only want to talk."

"NO! Put your guns _Down_!"

"Please," the woman sobs, trembling in his tight grip.

"SHUT UP!" only forces another sob from her. "YOU!" he yells to Gibbs, "put your guns down!"

Instead, Gibbs slowly breaks cover, stepping left, his Sig steady as he moves. McGee, recognizing the ploy, sidesteps right, walking slowly but steadily, weapon not deviating from its target. The lane is wide enough for two cars to maneuver easily and they slowly increase the distance until they reach the parked cars. They step between the trunks, partially into the lanes, so widely spaced that Schecter can't aim at one without the other shooting him.

"We just want to talk, Gene. Just talk."

"No! You want to kill me!"

"No, we don't. We won't shoot you. Let her go and we'll talk."

" _Please_! _Please_!"

"SHUT UP!" blasted in her ear makes her cry more.

Gibbs and McGee aim more carefully. Each has sufficient angle to bring the man down, even if restricted to a leg or shoulder shot, without a risk of hitting the crying woman.

"Gene, we just want to talk to you about that bottle, what you put in it. Nothing more. We just want to know what you used. Talk, Gene, that's all, just talk."

Schecter moves the pistol away from the woman's head, tucks under his chin and the roar is nearly drowned out by her shriek as the top of his head bursts open in a bloody gush.


	14. Too Many Questions

Chapter Fourteen  
Too Many Questions

The spectacular end of Gene Schecter, former waiter at Starbase 86 and suspect in the chemical attack on Sammy Sky and, indirectly, on Jimmy Palmer while playing his role as the evolved Chimpanzee Cornelius from 'Planet of the Apes' is enough to draw a barrage of Virginia State Troopers, local LEOs and dozens of Mall Security Officers in response to over two dozen 911 calls, none of which came from Special Agents Leroy Jethro Gibbs or Timothy McGee.

The first of the TV News Vans arrived twenty minutes later, and within forty that number had swelled to seven outside the cordoned area.

An ambulance from a nearby hospital had also arrived, and to the EMTs the Agents had turned over Donna Santini, who by then had started down from her hysterical height.

The scene is bordered on left and right by rows of cars whose owners cannot cross into the zone. However Gibbs, as Special Agent-in-Charge on the scene, has arranged with Mall Security that, upon the surrender of keys, Officers will drive the vehicles out of the zone, thereby expanding the available space for official vehicles. The only ones that cannot cross the barrier are the News vehicles, whose numerous occupants report to their bases by numerous means yet can find no one who will give them anything to report.

A check of the bags Schecter had been carrying revealed clothes, a hair dye kit, a false mustache, dark glasses and other minutia an amateur would use to disguise himself. Had he asked, Gibbs would have told him that none of these work.

x

After the scene is under control, he takes a moment to contact his Senior Field Agent back in DC as McGee calls Jennifer Shepherd. It would not do for the Director to learn about the two pronged debacle from ZNN.

/This place is still a circus,/ DiNozzo says, concluding a detailed report, /and shows every sign of staying that way all evening. Debra Zapigna's spread over a nine foot radius, spatter stretches thirteen feet away. Abby could tell us how hard she hit, like she did for Eastergaard, but I'm not calling her./

"Don't. She's overloaded."

/She can't help with this problem: Zapigna landed front first from twenty two stories up already cuffed. People are making noises that she didn't jump./

"I'll handle it." Here there are witnesses to Schecter putting his gun under his own chin, but no one other than DiNozzo and David had been on that roof. "You won't see jail time."

/Not worried, though I could use a few hours off my feet. Ducky's less than ten minutes away. Once he finishes here I'll send him out your way. There's not a lot he can do here./

"Or here." In neither case is the Cause, Manner or Time of Death in question. It's only the fact that the ME must visit and examine the scene that will extend the time. However, the parking lot will be returned to use within the evening. The front of that building will take far longer.

xxx

"Sir," the MTAC technician calls Gibbs' attention three hours later. "I have Captain Malone coming on." Gibbs had been seated in one of the theater chairs, going over the details of the case once again in his mind as he'd waited. Now he stands up, takes a position in the center of the well and gives a confirming nod to the man at his left.

DiNozzo and David are not back yet and the sun is well into its downward trek. It's true that in August it won't be dark for several hours yet, but as far as their case is going it is bleak indeed.

The large center screen lights and Captain William Malone, head of the Naval Research Lab, appears in ten times life size. /Agent Gibbs./

"Captain. Your situation gets worse by the hour."

/Agent, I wish I could help you, I really do. My hands are tied. Admiral DePardu has ordered me to reveal nothing about the project Captain Benes was working on./

"Might as well call it Life Source. The enemy, whoever they are, are already read into it."

/ _What_?/ This was enough to shake the man's composure.

"Your Private Court admitted she was approached by two men we believe were fake Secret Service Agents. They knew about Life Source, wanted her to tell them where to find Benes, his habits and other information; said they were doing an Investigation and to keep you out of the loop. The ones who took Benes and two of our agents out with that formula committed suicide rather than answer questions. You watch the News, Captain? One jumped off a roof, the other blew his brains out."

/My God./

He can read on the man's face that he knew about the two widely reported incidents, but not that they were connected to his operation. "What's the project's status now that Benes is out of it?"

/His Exec, Captain Patrick Kotzain, heads up the project until, or if, Benes is 100%. Assuming.../

"When was he last vetted?"

/A year ago./

"We'll vet him again – thoroughly."

/Do you think–/

"That it's past time for you to be telling us things."

/I'll, uh, try to get authorization and call you back./

"You do that, Captain – before someone else dies."

xxx

"Two suspects kill themselves," Gibbs says, not liking any part. It's after 1600, the only one not present is Palmer, who Gibbs has assigned to Monroe to keep track of the progress of the three patients and to funnel info to Abby as she gets it.

"Big question is 'why'?" Tony says. He and David had returned half an hour ago, but they'd been outpaced to the Bullpen by transmitted and cable reports from ZNN, ABC, CBS, 'the whole damned alphabet soup'.

That several of the less reputable services had Speculated on what had happened with Zapigna hadn't helped. Beltway Burns had been the only one who hadn't joined the increasing mob of speculators. His report was quite definite; he had an eyewitness who had been on that roof and had watched DiNozzo and David together fling the woman to her death.

Fortunately, Gibbs had been as good as his word. The supposed murder, an example of vicious and appalling Police Brutality, is under investigation by Metro Police Homicide Detective Lieutenant Jeffrey Carpenter, who had taken their Statements on the scene.

Before they'd left he'd remembered to advise them not to skip town.

x

"Zapigna was looking at Assault and Hindering an Investigation, then she ups it with Discharging a Weapon and Flagrant Disregard for Life. Schecter was facing Assault, Fleeing the Scene of a Crime, and he upped that with taking and threatening a hostage. No matter what, they were looking at limited jail time even if they got a Public Defender. I hate to say it, but even Palmer could've gotten them off, yet both kill themselves. Now doesn't that sound familiar?"

"Too familiar. McFadden and Richards."

Months ago Psychiatrists Samuel Richards and Elizabeth McFadden, using a series of sophisticated hypnotic CDs, had maneuvered military wives into killing the ones they loved most, in general their husbands. It took a long series of hypnotic conditioning sessions using a series of ever increasingly intense CDs, but the result was that the programmed women did kill their spouses. The kicker was that they were further programmed to immediately kill themselves.

Looking at McGee's face, he knows Tim will never forget that case, because his wife - then girlfriend - had been one of those attacked and programmed, and she'd nearly been forced to kill him and herself. If not for Abby, they'd both be dead right in this room.

"Sam Richards jumped the gun with those hypno CDs," McGee says.

"And he paid the price," Ziva reminds them. Richards had been murdered in his office, his Secretary paying that same price for his impatience or hubris.

"We took McFadden, but she never broke."

"She's doing seventy five years in the Maryland Women's Prison," Tony says. "My point is that this is a good match, except instead of offing themselves when their missions were complete, they were probably programmed to kill themselves if captured."

"Can't get answers from a dead suspect," Gibbs says, but his look dares his Senior Field Agent to say 'Ducky can'.

"Richards and McFadden only received the prepared CDs. That's about all we ever got from McFadden. They were never part of the group that made them. And we hit a brick wall with whoever took out Richards and his Secretary."

"All right, we'll take another crack at McFadden."

"I'd like to do that," McGee says.

"You looking for payback, McGee?" Though the one and only time he'd gone to that prison alone, he'd wound up a hostage in a riot, what he's asking is 'You want to pay her back for what she did to your wife?'

"No. No, I'm not."

He considers the point. He trusts his agent to be professional, he'll get the information without crossing a line. "You've got her."

But only then does McGee give him a look of less than certainty. "Boss, she's there for seventy five years. If this is the same thing, what am I going to offer her?"

"That you won't bring Palmer."

xxx

Inside the nine hundred square foot steel chamber nothing of the outside can creep in. There is no sound, and only watches and other equipment the three families have retained allows them to know time which has ceased to have meaning. Food is delivered irregularly, the light from the single 100 watt bulb in the middle of the chamber is unchanging, sleep is irregular at best.

Their captors haven't confiscated cell phones, PDAs or anything else, because nothing receives or transmits through the walls of this chamber. The best efforts of three determined scientists to modify their retained electronics have yielded no benefit.

They've had food and water but no words from anyone. The masked soldiers, whose camouflage uniforms contain no insignia, have only entered to bring suplies and they utter not a word. Despite pleas or threats, they remain silent.

Silence is broken only, as on this time, by the grating of a key in the steel door, then its swinging aside.

But this time, rather than soldiers bearing rifles and trays of food, those armed soldiers flank a tall man clad in a gray suit. His hair is a shock of white below which is a face chiseled in determination.

Catherine Bachman, Mark Esposito and Jeremy Cintron climb to their feet, leave their also rising families and step forward to confront this new face. It's the first face they've seen in days.

x

"My name is Jackson McGillicuddy," he says, as though that name imparts a wealth of information.

"Well, hiya Jakeson MacGulliciddy," Cintron says, but then his faux good-ol-boy manner vanishes. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"The matter is simple. I have obtained, at great expense and effort, plans for a device with which you are familiar. Those plans were followed to the letter, but the device does not function. You three will make it work."

"Forget it!" Esposito bites.

"Right," Bachman stands shoulder to shoulder with him. "We know what you want. Mark and I worked on several projects, but there's only one that Jerry worked with us on."

"And you can f*cking Forget It!" Cintron joins them.

"We did it once," Esposito says. " _Never_ again!"

"In the morning, you will be brought to the facility, and you will make the device work."

Catherine can barely credit the audacity, the smug certainty that they'll obey. "And I suppose, if we refuse, you'll threaten our families."

"No. I do not warn. I do not threaten."

A deafening roar blasts their ears as one of the masked soldiers fires his AK47 past them. The thunder echoes, tears at their ears but over it, barely audible to blasted ears, is a high pitched shriek under which " _CHLOE_!"

They turned with the shot but the sight is too horrific to absorb as Chloe Bachman, doubled over, hands clutching her side, falls to the steel floor. The eight captives rush to her but blood spurts from under her hands onto the floor. The girl lies screaming despite the frantic efforts to help.

"In the morning you begin work."


	15. Assignment

Chapter Fifteen  
Assignment

"Gibbs, Gibbs, Gibbs, Gibbs, Gibbs, Gibbs, Gibbs!" Abby had started the call at the door to the rear stairwell and finished it before his desk, her pigtails fluttering in her own breeze and sudden stop.

"What've you got, Abs?" he asks, thinking that if he doesn't she'll climb over the desk.

"Michelle faxed over the latest blood tests on Sammy and Jimmy and Benes."

"Nice to know you have a sense of priority."

"Of course I do," she declares and he knows she's missed the sarcasm. Her priority is, in fact, the opposite of his own, but he won't get into it.

"How's the Probette?" Tony asks.

She turns back to him. "Relieved, fine, doing her job and not quite as freaking out. She's gone from scared to mad, so I'm keeping my distance."

"Kind of easy here." She's stayed all day at the hospital and he suspects that, though she's been gathering and passing along vast amounts of information while conferring with the scientist, she has likely not left her husband's side for more than a minute at a time.

"So what do you have?" Gibbs cuts in to bring the conversation back to business.

"Benes' concentration of the chemical in his blood is down 19.3% since initial tests at Admission. Jimmy's virtually clean. Sammy's blood is 11% less saturated than it was on Admission. Though she got a bigger dose than anyone else, the drug is _Temporary_. She should recover in a few days."

"Why are Benes and Sky going to recover?" DiNozzo asks, and Abby whirls on him.

"What do you mean 'why is she going to recover'? You–!"

"I _mean_ ," he wishes he weren't cornered by the partitions; Abby is hyper at the best of times and several days without sleep is a life threatening situation – his life, "why put Benes under? If it were permanent, I could see it. But take him out for a week, then he can be right as rain after a few bouts with a Shrink? Aside from a test run, what does that accomplish?"

"It knocked him out of being in charge of Life Source," Gibbs says. "They've appointed his Exec as head of the project. That's why we're going to vet that guy until he bleeds."

"But if it's temporary, why did Zapigna jump off the roof and Schecter blow his brains out?"

"I don't know about that," Abby declares, "that's your job, but I can tell you this: It's the nastiest psychotropic drug I've ever seen, and if you ask me how they got it to target only the amygdala I shall _have_ to hurt you."

"You'll solve it," Gibbs says, assured.

"I hope so."

"Because until you do, we have a drug out there that can take out any man or woman, and we don't know how many ways it can be spread."

"Not to forget," DiNozzo reminds them, "that the delivery people, and probably others, are programmed to take themselves out if captured, so we get no answers."

"I want you to spread this out. Every contact you have, every Forensic Scientist, MPDC, CIA, FBI, CGIS, DEA, NSA, hell, NASA, I don't care how many letters. Everyone. Give them everything you have, everything you suspect. Hold nothing back." He looks to each grim face. "Because my gut says we're already too late."

x

"And as soon as you have done that," Jennifer Shepherd says from the bullpen entrance, "I want you to go home." She takes in the others in a fast pan. "All of you."

"Director?" Abby is the first to question orders even at the best of times, which this is not.

"You are all running on fumes. There's no one here who hasn't crossed the 80 work hour mark since your last day off and not only do agents not do their best jobs when they're falling on the carpet but this department's budget does not include Double Premium Overtime for six people. Wrap it up, enjoy the rest of the day, take the next two off and I don't want to see any of you before Thursday morning."

To that command there's no question or debate offered, and in fact only a token glance to Gibbs to gain the approval he can't refuse, but they do look anyway. Abby heads for the stairs and, without a word, each gathers his or her supplies and files out, Tony the last to make his exit.

x

"Not you, Agent DiNozzo."

"Ma'am?" He wishes he'd been faster, like warp speed fast, but there isn't even anyone here to whom he can appeal for help.

"Please join me in my office."

He'd been gathering his items into his backpack. He sets that on the floor under his desk and straightens. "Is there a problem?"

"There's a matter I need to discuss with you." He doesn't hurry to join her. _"Is_ there a problem, Agent DiNozzo?"

"Well... I'm flashing back to a time when you came to me like this with that look in your eye. It led to an Undercover Op that, well, had some pretty long term repercussions."

"I think not all of them were bad."

"No," he admits. "Not all of them were."

He'd been assigned, as the fictitious Media Professor Anthony DiNardo, to get close to the daughter of René Benoit, the late La Grenouille, with the intent of working his way into the Arms Dealer's confidence, if not into his Operation. The assignment had ended badly, his relationship with Jeanne Benoit almost worse.

She'd come to him after he'd been made, the Op had fallen apart and Benoit assassinated, and she'd had only one question: 'Was any of it real?'

He shudders to think of what his life would be like had he said 'No'.

x

"I'll only tell you now that this involves an Assignment, long term, but one that you are free to decline if you wish because it _is_ long term. Your assignment with La Grenouille lasted for several months, this will run many times longer. If you accept, you will be granted DNTK."

He has to work to keep his thoughts from showing on his face. Need-to-Know is a common aspect of covert Operations, particularly Clandestine ones. They're beating their heads right now on one and so far the only things that are cracking are their foreheads. Discretionary Need-to-Know means he'll be the one who decides who needs to know and who does not.

"Interested?"

"Intrigued," he admits.

"Come upstairs and we'll discuss the details."

 **To Be Continued.**

Next Episode: The Best Revenge is Revenge: While DC's Major Case Response Team searches for clues to those behind the Fear Formula, Los Angeles' Office of Special Projects strives to prevent a murderer from going to prison.


End file.
